An appeal from the new to the old Whigs, : in consequence of some late discussions in Parliament, relative to the Reflections on the French revolution

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
AT LOS ANGELES

A N

APPEAL

THE N E W

THE OLD WHIGS,

[ PRICB 3 s. f

0 8 2

A N

APPEAL

FROM

THE NEW

T O

THE OLD WHIGS,

IN GONSEQJJENCE OF SOME LATE

DISCUSSIONS IN PARLIAMENT,

RELATIVE TO THE

Reflexions on the French Revolution.

THE THIRD EDITION.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR J. DODSLEY, PALL-MALL,

M.DCC.XCI.

fHERE are Jome corrections in this Edition,
which tend to render the Jenje lejs objcurs in one or
two places. The order cf the two laft members is alfo
changed, and I believe for the better. This change
was made on the Juggeftion of a very learned perfon>
to the partiality of whoje friendship I owe much j to
the feverity of whoje judgment I owe more.

2FH

T Mr. Burke's time of life, and in his difpo-
fitions, pet ere honeflam dimiffionem was all he
had to do with his political aflbciates. This boon
- they have not choien to grant him. With many ex-
0 prefllons of good-will, in effeft they tell him he has
|j loaded the ftage too long. They conceive it, tho'
g an harfh yet a neceffary office, in full parliament to
~ declare to the prefent age, and to as late a pofteri-
ty, as fhall take any concern in the proceedings
of our day, that by one book he has diigraced the
whole tenour of his life. — Thus they difmifs their
oo old partner of the war. He is advifed to retire,
^ whilft they continue to ferve the public upon wifer
<=° principles, and under better aufpices,
^ . Whether Diogenes the Cynic was a true phi-
=> lofopher, cannot eafily be determined. He has
written nothing. But the fayings of his which
are handed down by others, are lively; and may
be eafily and aptly applied on many occafions
by thofe whofe wit is not fo perfect as their me-
& mory. This Diogenes (as every one will recollefl)
5 was citizen of a little bleak town fituated on the
^ coaft of the Euxine, and expofed to all the buffets of
that unhofpitable fea. He lived at a great diftance

from

from thofe weather-beaten walls, in eafe and indo-
lence, and in the midft of literary leifure, when he
was informed that his townfmen had condemned
him to be banifhed from Sinope ; he anfwered
coolly, "And I condemn them to live in Sinope."

/The gentlemen of the party in which Mr. Burke
has always acted, in palling upon him the fentence
I of retirement *, have done nothing more than to
\ confirm the fentence which he had long before
palTed upon himfelf. When that retreat was choice,
which the tribunal of his peers inflict as puniih-
ment, it is plain he does not think their fentence
intolerably fevere. Whether they who are to con-
tinue in the Sinope which fliortly he is to leave,
will fpend the long years which, I hope, remain
to them, in a manner more to their fatisfaction,
than he Ihall flide down, in filence and obfcurity,
the flope of his declining days, is belt known to
him who meafures out years, and days, and for-
tunes.

* News-paper intelligence ought always to be received with
Come degree of caution. I do not know that the following pa-
ragraph is founded on any authority; but it comes with an
air of authority. The paper is profefledly in the intereft of
the modern Whigs, and under their direction. The para-
graph is not difclaimed on their part. It profefles to be the
decifion of thofe whom its author calls " The great and firm
body of the Whigs of England." Who are the Whigs of a
different competition, which the promulgator of the fentence
confiders as compj>fed of fleeting ard unfettled particles, I
know not, nor whether there be any of that defcription. The
definitive fentence of" the great and firm body of the Whigs
of England" (as this paper gives it out) is as follows :

" The great and firm body of the Whigs of England, true to their
«c principles, have decided on the difpnte between Mr. Fox and Mr.
" Burke; and the former is declared to have maintained the pure doc-
" trines by which they are bound together, and upon which they have
" invariably acted. Ths confequence is, that Mr. Burke retires from
« parliament." A/cmng- Chronicle, May it, tygr.

~~* *"""•** The

( 3 )

The quality of the fentencc does not however
decide on the juftice of it. Angry friendfhip is
fometimes as bad as calm enmity. For this rea-
fon the cold neutrality of abftraft juftice, is, to a
good and clear caufe, a more defirable thing than
an affection liable to be any way difturbed. When
the trial is by friends, if the decifion fhould happen
to be favorable, the honor of the acquittal is leflen-
edj if adverfe, the condemnation is exceedingly
embittered. It is aggravated by coming from lips
profeffmg friendfhip, and pronouncing judgment
with forrow and reluctance. Taking in the whole
view of life, it is more fafe to live under the jurif-
diction of fevere but Heady reafon, than under
the empire of indulgent, but capricious paffion.
It is certainly well for Mr. Burke that there are
impartial men in the world. To them I addrefs
myfelf, pending the appeal which on his part is
made from the living to the dead, from the mo-
dern Whigs to the antient.

The gentlemen, who, in the name of the party,
have palled fentence on Mr. Burke's book, in the
light of literary criticifm are judges above all
challenge. He did not indeed flatter himfelf, that
as a writer, he could claim the approbation of
men whole talents, in his judgment and in the
public judgment, approach to prodigies ; if ever
fuch perfons fliould be difpofed to eftimate the
merit of a compofition upon the ftandard of their
own ability.

In their critical cenfure, though Mr. Burke may
find himfelf humbled by it as a writer, as a man and
as an Englifhman, he finds matter not only of con-
folation, but of pride. He propofed to convey to a j
foreign people, not his own ideas, but the prevalent
opinions and fentiments of a nation, renowned for
wifdom, and celebrated in all ages for a well under-
B 2 ftood

( 4 )

ftood and well regulated love of freedom. This was
the avowed purpofe of the far greater part of his
work. As that work has not been ill received, and
as his critics will not only admit but contend, that
this reception coulH not be owing to any excellence
fn the compofition capable of perverting the public
judgment, it is clear that he is not disavowed by
the nation whofe fentiments he had undertaken to
defcnbe. His reprefcntation is authenticated by
the verdict of his country. Had his piece, as a
work of fkill, been thought worthy of commenda-
tion, fome doubt might have been entertained of
the caufe of his fuccefs. But the matter (lands
exaftly as he wiflies it. He is more happy to
have his fidelity in reprefentation recognized by
the body of the people, than if he were to be
ranked in point of ability (and higher he could not
be ranked) with thofe whofe critical cenlure he has
had the misfortune to incur.

It is not from this part of their decifion which the
author wiflies an appeal. There are things which
touch him more nearly. To abandon them would
argue, not diffidence in his abilities, but treachery
to his caufe. Had his work been recognized as
a pattern for dextrous argument, and powerful
eloquence, yet if it tended to eftablifli maxims, or
to infpire fentiments, adverfe to the wife and free
conftitution of this kingdom, he would only have
caufe to lament, that it pofTerTed qualities fitted to
perpetuate the memory of his offence. Oblivioa
would be the only means of his efcaping the re-
proaches of pofterity. But, after receiving the com-
mon allowance due to the common weaknefs of
man, he wiflies to owe no part of the indulgence of
the world to its forgetfulnefs. He is at uTue with
the party, before the prefent, and if ever he can reach
it, before the coming, generation.

The

( 5 )

The author, feveral months previous to his pub-
lication, well knew, that two gentlemen, both of them
pofieffed of the moft diftinguiihed abilities, and of
a moft decifive authority in the party, had differed
with him in one of the moft material points relative
to the French revolution ; that is in their opinion
of the behaviour of the French foldiery, and its re-
volt from its officers. At the time of their public
declaration on this fubject, he did not imagine the
opinion of thefe two gentlemen had extended a
great way beyond themfelves. He was however
well aware of the probability, that perlbns of"
their juft credit and influence would at length
difpofe the greater number to an agreement with
their fentiments; and perhaps might induce the,
whole body to a tacit acquieicence in their declara-
tions, under a natural, and not always an improper
diflike of {hewing a difference with thofe who lead
their party. I- will 'not deny, that in general this-
conduct in parties is defenfible ; but within what li-
mits the practice is to be circumlcribed, and with
what exceptions the doctrine which fupports it is to
be received, it is not my prefent purpofe to define.
The prefent queftion has nothing to do with their
motives j it only regards the public expreffion of
their fentiments.

The author is compelled, however reluctantly, to
receive the fentence pronounced upon him in the
Houfe of Commons as that of the party. It pro-
ceeded from the mouth of him who muft be regard-
ed as its authentic organ. In a difcuffion which con-
tinued for two days, no one gentleman of the oppofi-
tion interpofed a negative, or even a doubt, in favour
of him or of his opinions. If an idea confonant to the
doctrine of his book, or favourable to his conduct,
lui ks in the minds of any perfons in that defcription,
it is to be confidered only as a peculiarity whjcn they
B 3 indulge

indulge to their own private liberty of thinking. The
author cannot reckon upon it. It has nothing to do
with them as members of a party. In their public
capacity, in every thing that meets the public ear,
or public eye, the body muft be confidered as una-
nimous.

They muft have been animated with a very warm
zeal againft thofe opinions, becaufe they were under
no necejfity of acting as they did, from any juft
caufe of apprehenfion that the errors of this writer
fhould be taken for theirs. They might difap-
prove i it was not neceffary they fhould difaiiow
him, as they have done in the whole, and in all the
parts of his book ; becaufe neither in the whole nor
in any of the parts, were they, directly, or by any
implication, involved. The author was known in-
deed to have been warmly, ftrenucufly, and affec^
tionately, againft all allurements of ambition, and
all pofiibility of alienation from pride, or perfonal
picque, or peevilh jealoufy, attached to the Whig
party. With one of them he has had a long friend-
fliip, which he muft ever remember with a me-
lancholy pleafure. To the great, real, and ami-
able virtues, and to the unequalled abilities of
that gentleman, he lhall always join with his
country in paying a juft tribute of applaufe.
There are others in that party for whom, without
any fhade of forrow, he bears as high a degree of
love as can enter into the human heart; and as
much veneration as ought to be paid to human
creatures ; becaufe he firmly believes, that they are
endowed with as many and as great virtues, as the
nature of man is capable of producing, joined to
great clearnefs of intellect, to a juft judgment, to a
wonderful temper, and to true wifdom. His fenti-
ments with regard to them can never vary, with-
out fubjecting him to the juft indignation of man-

kind,,

( 7 )

kind, who are bound, and are generally difpofed,
to look up with reverence to the beft patterns of
their fpecies, and fuch as give a dignity to the na-
ture of which we all participate. For the whole
of the party he has high refpect. Upon a view
indeed of the compofition of all parties, he finds
great fatisfaction. It is, that in leaving the fer-
vice of his country, he leaves parliament without
all comparifon richer in abilities than he found it.
Very folid and very brilliant talents diftinguifh
the minifterial benches. The oppofite rows are
a fort of feminary of genius, and have brought
forth fuch and fo great talents as never before
(amongft us at leaft) have appeared together. If
their owners are difpofed to ferve their country,
(he trufts they are) they are in a condition to ren-
der it fervices of the higheft importance. If, through
miftake or paffion, they are led to contribute to its
ruin, we fhail at leaft have a confolation denied to
the ruined country that adjoins us — we fhall not be
deftroyed by men of mean or fecondary capacities.

All thefe confiderations of party attachment,
of perfonal regard, and of perfonal admiration,
rendered the author of the Reflections extremely
cautious, left the flighteft fufpicion fhould arife of
his having undertaken to exprefs the fentiments
even of a {ingle man of that description. His words
at the outfet of his Reflections are thefe :

" In the firft letter I had the honour to write to
<c you, and which at length I fend, I wrote neither
"for, nor from any defcription of men ; nor fhall
" I in this. My errors, if any, are my own. My

reputation alone is to anfwer for them." In

another place, he fays (p. 126.) <c I have no man's
" proxy. I fpeak only from myjelf\ when I difclaim,
" as I do, with all poffible earneftnefs, all commu-
K nion with the actors in that triumph, or with the
B 4 " admirer*

*c admirers of it. When I afiert any thing elfe, as
" concerning the people of England, I fpeak from
" obfervation, not from authority"

To fay then, that the book did not contain the fenti-
ments of their party, is not to contradict the author,
or to clear themfelves. If the party had denied his
doctrines to be the current opinions of the majo-
rity in the nation, they would have put the quef-
tion on its true iffue. There, I hope and believe, his
cenfurers will find on the trial, that the author is
as faithful a reprefentative of the general fentiment of;
the people of England, as any perfon amongft them
can be of the ideas of his own party.

The French Revolution can have no connexion
with the objeds of any parties in England formed
before the period of that event, unlefs they choofe
to imitate any of its a6b, or to confolidate any princi-
ples of that revolution with their own opinions. The
French revolution is no part of their original con-
fra<?l. The matter, (landing by itfelf, is an open
fubjecl: of political difcufiion, like all the other re-
volutions (and there are many) which have been
attempted or accomplished in our age. But if
any confiderable number of Britifh fubje&s, taking
a factious intereft in the proceedings of France,
begin publicly to incorporate themfelves for the
fubverfion of nothing Ihort of the whole conftitution
of this kingdom j to incorporate themfelves for the
ytter overthrow of the body of its laws, civil and
ecclefiaftical, and with them of the whole fyftem
of its manners, in favour of the new conftitution,
and of the modern ufages of the French nation, I
think no party principle could bind the author not to
exprefs his fentiments ftrongly againft fuch a faction,
On the contrary, he was perhaps bound to mark his
dffient, when the leaders of the party were daily go-
jpg out of their way to make public declarations in

parliament^

( 9 )

parliament, which, notwithftanding the purity of
their intentions, had a tendency to encourage ill-
defigning men in their practices againft our con-
flitution.

The members of this faction leave no doubt of
the nature and the extent of the miichief they mean
to produce. They declare it openly and deci-
fively. Their intentions are not left equivocal.
They are put out of all difpute by the thanks
which, formally and as it were officially, they ifiue,
in order to recommend, and to promote the cir-
culation of the moft atrocious and treafonable li-
bels, againft all the hitherto cheriflied objects of
the love and veneration of this people. Is it con-
trary to the duty of a good fubject, to reprobate
fuch proceedings ? Is it alien to the office of a good
member of parliament, when fuch practices en-
creafe, and when the audacity of the confpirators
grows with their impunity, to point out in his place
their evil tendency to the happy conftitution which
he is chofen to guard ? Is it wrong in any fenfe,
to render the people of England fenfible how much
they muft fuffer if unfortunately fuch a wicked fac-
tion fhould become porTeffed in this countiy of
the fame power which their allies in the very next
to us have fo perfidioufly ufurped, and fo outra-
geoufly abufed ? Is it inhuman to prevent, if pofli-
ble, the fpilling of their blood, or imprudent to
guard againft the effufion of our own ? Is it con-
trary to any of the honeft principles of party, or re-
pugnant to any of the known duties of friend (hip
for any fenator, refpectfully, and amicably, to cau-
tion his brother members againft countenancing by
inconfiderate expreflions a fort of proceeding which
it is impofiible they fhould deliberately approve ?

He had undertaken to demonftrate, by arguments
which he thought could not be refuted, and by do-
cuments, which he was fure could not be denied,

thac

( '0 )

that no comparifort was to be made between the Bri-
tifli government, and the French ufurpation. — That
they who endeavoured madly to compare them,
were by no means making the companion of one
good fyftem with another good fyftem, which va-
ried only in local and circumftantial differences ;
much lefs, that they were holding out to us a fupe-
rior pattern of legal liberty, which we might fub-
ftitute in the place of our old, and, as they defcribe
it, fuperannuated conftitution. He meant to de-
monftpate, that the French fcheme was not a com-
parative good, but a pofitive evil. — That the quef-
tion did . not at all turn, as it had been ftated,
on a parallel between a monarchy and a republic.
He denied that the prefent fcheme of things in
France, did at all deferve the refpectable name of a
republic : he had therefore no comparifon be-
tween monarchies and republics to make. — That
what was done in France was a wild attempt to
methodize anarchy j to perpetuate and fix diforder.
That it was a foul, impious, monftrous thing, whol-
ly out of the courfe of moral nature. He un-
dertook to prove, that it was generated in trea-
chery, fraud, falfehood, hypocrify, and unprovoked
murder. — He offered to make out, that thofe who
have led in that bufinefs, had conducted themfelves
with the utmoft perfidy to their colleagues in func-
tion, and with the moft flagrant perjury both to-
wards their king and their conflituents j to the one
of whom the affembly had fworn fealty, and to the
other, when under no fort of violence or conftraint,
they had fworn a full obedience to inftructions. —
That by the terror of affaffination they had driven
away a very great number of the members, fo as to
produce a faife appearance xof a majority. — That
this fictitious majority had fabricated a conftitution,
which as now it ftands, is a tyranny far beyond
any example that can be found in the civilized
4 European

( It )

European world of our age; that therefore the
lovers of it muft be lovers, not of liberty, but, iff
they really underftand its nature, of the lowed and
bafeft of all fervitude.

He propofed to prove, that the prefent ftate of
things in France is not a tranfient evil, productive,
as fome have too favourably reprefented it, of a
lafting good ; but that the prefent evil is only the j
means of producing future, and (if that were poffible) I
worfe evils. — That it is not, an undigefted, imper-
feel, and crude fcheme of liberty, which may gradu-
ally be mellowed and ripened into an orderly and
focial freedom ; but that it is ib fundamentally wrong,
as to be utterly incapable of correcting itfelf by-
any length of time, or of being formed into any
mode of polity, of which a member of the houfc
of commons could publicly declare his approba-
tion,

If it had been permitted to Mr. Burke, he would
have fliewn diftinctly, and in detail, that what the
afiembly calling itfelf national, had held out as a Jarge
and liberal toleration, is in reality a cruel and in-
fidious religious perfecution ; infinitely more bitter
than any which had been heard of within this cen-
tury.— That it had a feature in it worfe than the
old perfections. — That the old perfecutors afted,
or pretended to aft, from zeal towards fome fyflem
of piety and virtue : they gave ftrong preferences
to their own ; and if they drove people from one
religion, they provided for them ancther, in which
men might take refuge, and expect confolation. —
That their new perft cution is not againft a variety
in confcience, but againft all confcience. That it}
profefles contempt towards its objeft j and whilf]:/
it treats all religion with fcorn, is riot fo much aaf
neutral about the modes: It unites the oppofite
pyils of intolerance an4 pf indifference,

( I* )

He could have proved, that it is fo far from re-
jeftingtefts (as unaccountably had been aflerted) that
the afiembly had impofed tefts of a peculiar hardfhip,
arifing from a cruel and premeditated pecuniary fraud :
tefts againft old principles, fanftioned by the laws, and
binding upon the confcience. — That thefe tefts were
not impofed as titles to fome new honour or fome
new benefit, but to enable men to hold a poor com-
penfation for their legal eftates, of which they had
been unjuftly deprived; and, as they had before
been reduced from affluence to indigence, fo on
refufal to fwear againft their confcience, they are
now driven from indigence to famine, and treated
-with every pofllble degree of outrage, infult, and
inhumanity. — That thefe tefts, which their impofers
well knew would not be taken, were intended for
the very purpofe of cheating their miferable victims
out of the compenfation which the tyrannic im-
poftors of the aflembly had previoufly and pur-
pofely rendered the public unable to pay. That
thus their ultimate violence arofe from their origi-
nal fraud.

He would have jfhewn that the univerfal peace
and concord amongft nations, which thefe common
enemies to mankind had held out with the fame frau-
dulent ends and pretences with which they had uni-
formly conducted every part of their proceeding,
was a coarfe and clumfy deception, unworthy to be
propofed as an example, by an informed and fa-.
gacious Britifh fenator, to any other country.-— .
That far from peace and good-will to men, they
meditated war againft all other governments; and
propofed fyftematically to excite in them all the very
worft kind of feditions, in order to lead to their com-
mon deftruction. — That they had diicovered, in the
few inftances in which they have hitherto had the
power of difcovering it, (as at Avignon, and in

the

( 1.3 )

the Comtat, at Cavailhon and at Carpentras)
in what a favage manner they mean to conduct
the feditions and wars they have planned againft
their neighbours for the fake of putting themlelves
at the head of a confederation of republics as wild
and as mifchievous as their own. He would hav*
fhewn in what manner that wicked fcheme was
carried on in thofe places, without being dire<5tly
either owned or difclaimed, in hopes that the un-
done people fhould at length be obliged to fly to
their tyrannic protection, as fome fort of refuge
from their barbarous and treacherous hoftility. He
would have fhewn from thofe examples, that neither
this nor any other fociety could be in fafety as ;
long as fuch a public enerny was in a condition to j
continue directly or indirectly fuch practices againft
its peace, — That Great Britain was a principal ob-//
ject of their machinations ; and that they had be-
gun by eftablifhing correfpondences, communica-/
tions, and a fort of federal union with the factious^
here. — That no practical enjoyment of a thing fo
imperfect and precarious, as human happinefs muft
be, even under the very beft of governments, could
be a feoirity for the exiftence of thefe govern-
ments, during the prevalence of the principles of
France, propagated from that grand fchool of every
difoixler, and every vice.

He was prepared to (hew the madnefs of their
declaration of the pretended rights of man •> the
childifh futility of fome of their maxims ; the grofs
andftupidabfurdity,andthe palpable falfity of others ;
and the mifchievous tendency of all fuch declara-
tions to the wellbeing of men and of citizens, and to
the fafety and profperity of every juft commonwealth.
He was prepared to fhew that, in • their conduct,
the aflembly had directly violated not only every
found principle of government, but every one, without
exception, of their own falfe or futile maxims ; and

indeed

( 14 )

indeed every rule they had pretended to lay down
for their own direction.

In a word, he was ready to fhew, that thofe
who could, after fuch a full and fair expofure, con-
tinue to countenance the French infanity, were not
miflaken politicians, but bad men -, but he thought
that in this cafe, as in many others, ignorance had
been the caufe of admiration.

Thefe are ftrong affertions. They required ftrong
proofs. The member who laid down thefe pofitions
was and is ready to give, in his place, to each po-
fition decifive evidence, correfpondent to the na-
ture and quality of the feveral allegations.

In order to judge on the propriety of the interrup-
tion given to Mr. Burke, in his fpeech on the com-
mittee of the Quebec bill, it is necefiary to enquire,
firft, whether, on general principles, he ought
to have been fuffered to prove his allegations ?
Secondly, whether the time he had chofen was fo
very unieafonable as to make his exercife of a par-
liamentary right productive of ill effects on his
friends or his country ? Thirdly, whether the opi-
nions delivered in his book, and which he had
begun to expatiate upon that day, were in contra-
diction to his former principles, and inconfiftent
with the general tenor of his publick conduct ?

They who have made eloquent panegyrics on the
French Revolution, and who think a free difcuflion fo
very advantageous in every cafe, and under every
circumftance, ought not, in my opinion, to have pre-
vented their eulogies from being tried ' on the teft
of facts. If their panegyric had been anfwered
with an invective (bating the difference in point of
eloquence) the one would have been as good as the
other : that is, they would both of them have
been good for nothing. The panegyric and the
fatire ought to be fuffered to go to trial j and that

which

which fhrinks from it, muft be contented to (land
at bell as a mere declamation.

I do not think Mr. Burke was wrong in the
courfe he took. That which feemed to be recom-
mended to him by Mr. Pitt, was rather to extol
the Englifh conftitution, than to attack the French.
I do not determine what would be beft for Mr.
Pitt to do in his fituadon. I do not deny that be
may have good reafons for his referve. Perhaps
they might have been as good for a fimilar referve
on the part of Mr. Fox, if his zeal had fuffered
him to liften to them. But there were no motives
of minifterial prudence, or of that prudence which
ought to guide a man perhaps on the eve of being
minifter, to reftrain the author of the Reflections.
He is in no office under the crown j he is not the
organ of any party.

The excellencies of the Britifh conftitution had
already exercifed and exhaufted the talents of the
beft thinkers, and the moft eloquent writers and
fpeakers, that the world ever faw. But in the pr»-
fent cafe, a fyftem declared to be far better, and
which certainly is much newer (to reftlefs and un-
ftable minds no fmall recommendation) was held
out to the admiration of the good people of Eng-
land. In that cafe, it was furely proper for thofe,
who had far other thoughts of the French conftitu-
tion, to fcrutinize that plan which has been recom-
mended to our imitation by active and zealous fac*
tions, at home and abroad. Our complexion is
fuch, that we are palled with enjoyment, and ftimu-
lated with hope; that we become lefs fenfible to
a long-pofferTed benefit, from the very circum-
fiance that it is become habitual. Specious, un-
tried, ambiguous profpects of new advantage re-
commend themfelves to the fpirit of adventure,
which more or lefs prevails in every mind. From
this temper, men, and factions, and nations too,

have

have facrifked the good, of which they had been
in allured poilefilon, in favour of wild and irrational
expectations. What fliould hinder Mr. Burke, if
he thought this temper likely, at one time or other,
to prevail in our country, from expofing to a mul-
titude, eager to game, the falfe calculations of this
lottery of fraud ?

I allow, as I ought to do, for the effufions which
come from a general zeal for liberty. This is to
be indulged, and even to be encouraged, as long
as the queftion is general. An orator, above all men,
ought to be allowed a full and free ufe of the
praife of liberty. A common place in favour of
ilavery and tyranny delivered to a popular afiembly,
would indeed be a bold defiance to all the princi-
ples of rhetoric. But in a queftion whether any
particular conftitution is or is not a plan of ra-
tional liberty, this kind of rhetorical flourifh in
favour of freedom in general, is furely a little out of
its place. It is virtually a begging of the queftion.
It is a fong of triumph, before the battle.

" But Mr. Fox does not make the panegyric of
" the new conftitution ; it is the deftruction only of
" the ablblute monarchy he commends." When
that namelefs thing which has been lately fet up in
France was defcribed as " the moft ftupendous and
*£ glorious edifice of liberty, which had been erecl-
" ed on the foundation of human integrity in
" any time or country," it might at firft, have
led the hearer into an opinion, that the con-
ftruction of the new fabric was an object of ad-
miration, as well as the demolition of the old.
Mr. Fox, however, has explained himfelf; and it
would be too like that captious and cavilling fpirit,
which I fo perfectly deteft, if I were to pin down
the language of an eloquent and ardent mind, to
the punctilious exactnefs of a pleader. Then Mr.
Fox did not mean to applaud that monftrous thing,

which,

Which, by the courtefy of France, they call a con-
ftkution. I eafily believe it. Far from meriting
the praifes of a great genius like Mr. Fox, it can-
not be approved by any man of common fenfe, or
common information. He cannot admire the change
of one piece of barbarifm for another, and a worfe. /
He cannot rejoice at the deftruction of a monar-
chy, mitigated by manners, refpectful to laws and
ufages, and attentive, perhaps but too attentive to
public opinion, in favour of the tyranny of a licen-
tious, ferocious, and favage multitude, without laws,
manners, or morals, and which fo far from refpect-
ing the general fenfe of mankind, infolently endea-
vours to alter all the principles and opinions, which
have hitherto guided and contained the world, and
to force them into a conformity to their views and
actions. His mind is made to better things.

That a man fhould rejoice and triumph in the
deftruction of an abfolute monarchy -, that in fuch
an event he fhould overlook the captivity, dif-
grace, and degradation of an unfortunate prince,
and the continual danger to a life which exifts only
to be endangered ; that he fhould overlook the utter
ruin of whole orders and clafTes of men, extending it-
felf directly, or in its neareft confequences, to at leaft
a million of our kind, and to at leaft the temporary
•wretchednefs of an whole community, I do not de-
ny to be in fome fort natural : Becaufe, when people
fee a political object, which they ardently defire, but
in one point of view, they are apt extremely to pal-
liate, or underrate the evils which may arife in ob-
taining it. This is no reflection on the humanity
of thofe perfons. Their good-nature I am the laft
man in the world to difpute. It only fhews that
they are not fufficiently informed, or fufficiently
confiderate. When they come to reflect ferioufly
on the tranfaction, they will think themfelves bound
to examine what the object is that has been ac-
quired by all this havock. They will hardly afifert ,
C that

( 18 )

that the deltr notion of an abfolute monarchy, is a
thing good in itfelf, without any fort of reference to
•the antecedent ftate of things, or to confequences
which refult from the change ; without any confider-
ation whether under its ancient rule a country was, to.
a confiderable degree, flourifhing and populous,;
highly cultivated, and highly commercial ; and whe-
ther, under that domination, though perfonal liberty,
had been precarious and infecure, property at leaft '
was ever violated. They cannot take the moral fym-
pathies of the human mind along with them, in ab-
ftractions feparated from the good or evil condition
of the {late, from the quality of actions, and the cha-
racter of the actors. None of us love abfolute and
uncontrolled monarchy ; but we could not rejoice at
the fufferings of a Marcus Aurelius, or a Trajan,
who were abfolute monarchs, as we do when Nero
is condemned by the fenate to be punifhed more
•major urn : Nor when that monfter was obliged to
fly with his wife Sporus, and to drink puddle, were
men affected in the fame manner, as when the ve-
nerable Galba, with all his faults and errors, v/as
'murdered by a revolted mercenary foldiery. With
fuch things before our eyes our feelings contradict
our theories ; and when this is the cafe, the feel-
ings are true, and the theory is falfe. What I con-
tend for is, that in commending the deilruction of,
an abfolute monarchy, all the circumftances ought j
not to be wholly overlooked, as confiderations fitj
only for fhallow and fuperficial minds.

The fubverfion of a government, to deferve any
praife, muft be confidered but as a ftep preparatory
to the formation of fomething better, either in the
fcheme of the government itfelf, or in the peribns
who adminifter in it, or in both. Thefe events can-
not in reaion be feparated. For inftance, when we
praife our revolution of 1688, though the nation,
in that act, was on the defenfive, and was juftified

in

( '9 )

in incurring all the evils of a defenfive war, we do
not reft there. We always combine with the fub-
verfion of the old government the happy fettlement
which followed. When we eftimate that revolt ,
tion, we mean to comprehend in our calculation f
both the value of the thing parted withy and the /
value of the thing received in exchange.

The burthen of proof lies heavily on thofe who
tear to pieces the whole frame and contexture of
their country, that they could find no other way
of fettling a government fit to obtain its rational
ends, except that which they have purfued by means
unfavourable to all the prefent happinefs of millions
of people, and to the utter ruin of feveral hundreds
of thoufands. In their political arrangements, men
have no right to put the well-being of the prefent
generation wholly out of the queftion. Perhaps
the only moral truft with any certainty in our
hands, is the care of our own time. With regard
to futurity, we are to treat it like a ward. We art
not fo to attempt an improvement of his fortune, as
to put the capital of his eftate to any hazard.

It is not worth our while to difcufs, like fophifters,
whether, in no cafe, fome evil, for the fake of fome
benefit is to be tolerated. Nothing univerfal can
be rationally affirmed on any moral, or any politi-
cal fubjecl. Pure metaphyfical abftraction doe* not
belong to thefe matters. The lines of morality are
not like the ideal lines of mathematics. They arc
broad and deep as well as long. They admit of ex-» ,
ceptions ; they demand modifications. Thefe ex-
ceptions and modifications are not made by th£ /
procefs of logic, but by the rules of prudence. Pru-
dence is not only the firft in rank of the virtues poli-
tical and moral, but fhe is the director, the regu-
lator, the ftandard of them all. Metaphyfics can-
not live without definition; but prudence is cau-
tious how foe defines. Our courts cannot be more
C a fearful

fearful in fuffering fictitious cafes to be brought be-
fore them for eliciting their determination on a point
of law, than prudent moralifts are in putting ex-
treme and hazardous cafes of confcience upon emer-
gencies not exifting. Without attempting there-
fore to define, what never can be defined, the cafe
of a revolution in government, this, I think, may \
be fafely affirmed, that a fore and prefilng evil is to
be removed, and that a good, great in its amount,
and unequivocal in its nature, mud be probable
almoft to certainty, before the ineflimable price of
our own morals, and the well-being of a number
of our fellow-citizens, is paid for a revolution. If
ever we ought to be ceconomifls even to parfimony,
it is in the voluntary production of evil. Every \
revolution contains in it fomething of evil.
' It muft always be, to thofe who are the greateft

/amateurs, or even profeffors of revolutions, a
matter very hard to prove, that the late French
government was fo bad, that nothing worfe, in the
infinite devices of men, could come in its place.
'They who have brought France to its prefent con-
dition ought to prove allb, by fomething better
than prattling about the Baftile, that their fubverted
government was as incapable, as the prefent cer-
tainly is, of all improvement and correction. How
dare they to fay fo who have never made that expe-
riment? They are experimenters by their trade.
They hare made an hundred others, infinitely more
hazardous.

,~- The Englifh admirers of the forty-eight thoufand
republics which form the French federation, praife
them not for what they are, but for what they are to
become. They do not talk as politicians but as
prophets. But in whatever character they choofe
to found panegyric on prediction, it will be thought
a little fmgular to praife any work, not for its own
merits, but for the merits of fomething elfe which

may

may fucceed to it. When any political inftitution is
praifed, in fpite of great and prominent faults of every
kind, and in all its parts, it muft be fuppofed to
have fomething excellent in its fundamental prin-
ciples. It muft be fhewn that it is right though
imperfect; that it is not only by poflibility fufcep-
tible of improvement, but that it contains in it a
principle tending to its melioration.

Before they attempt to fhew this progreflion of
their favourite work, from abfolute pravity to finifhed
perfection, they will find themfelves engaged in a
civil war with thofe whofe caufe they maintain.
What! alter our fublime conftitution, the glory of
France, the envy of the world, the pattern for man-
kind, the mafter- piece of legiflation, the collected
and concentrated glory of this enlightened age ! Have
we not produced it ready made and ready armed, ma-
ture in its birth, a perfect goddefs of wifdom and of
war, hammered by our blackfmith midwives out of
the brain of Jupiter himfelf? Have we not fworn
our devout, profane, believing, infidel people, to an
allegiance to this goddefs, even before Ihe had burft
the dura mater, and as yet exifted only in embryo ?
Have we not folemnly declared this conftitution
unalterable by any future legiflature ? Have we
not bound it on pofterity for ever, though our
abettors have declared that no one generation is
competent to bind another ? Have we not obliged
the members of every future aflembly to qualify
themfelves for their feats by fwearing to its con-
fcrvation ?

Indeed the French conftitution always muft be
(if a change is not made in all their principles and
fundamental arrangements) a government wholly by
popular reprefentation. It muft be this or nothing.
The French faction confiders as an ufurpation, as an
atrocious violation of the indefeafible rights of man,
every other defcription. of government. Take it
C 3 or

or leave it ; there is no medium. Let the irrefra-
gable doctors fight out their own controverfy in
£heir own way, and with their own weapons j and
when they are tirecj let them commence a treaty
of peace. Let the plenipotentiary Ibphifters of Eng-
land fettle with the diplomatic fophifters of France
in what manner right is to be corrected by an infu-
jfion of wrong, and how truth .may be rendered more
true by a due intermixture of falfhood.

Having iuffitiently proved, that nothing could
make it generally improper for Mr. Burke to prove
what he had alledged concerning the object of this
difpute, I pafs to the fecond queihien, that is, whe-
ther he was juftified in clioofijig the committee
on the Quebec bih as the field for this difcuf-
fion ? If it were neceflary, it might be fhewn,
that he was not the firft to bring thefe difcufllons
into parliament, nor the firft to renew them in
this feffion. The fact is notorious. As to the
Quebec bill, they were introduced into the debate
upon that fubject for two plain reafons ; firft, that
as he thought it then not advifeable to make the
proceedings of the factious focieties the fubject
of a direct motion, he had no other way open
to him. Nobody has attempted to fhew, that it
was at all admifiible into any other bufmefs before
the houfe. Here every thing was favourable. Here \
was a bill to form a new constitution for a French ;
province under Englifh dominion. The queftion, 1
naturally arofe, whether we fhould fettle that con-^
ftitution upon Engliih ideas, or upon French.!
This furnifhed an opportunity for examining into
the value of the French cqnftitudon, either confider-
ed as applicable to colonial government, or in its own
nature. The bill too was in a committee. By the
privilege of fpeaking as often as he pleafed, he hoped
in fome meafure to fupply the want of fupport,
which he had but too much reafon to apprehend.
JTI a committee it was always in his power to bring

the

the queftions from generalities to fafts ; from de- i
clamation to difcuffion. Some benefit he actually
received from this privilege. Theie are plain, ob-
vious, natural reafons for his conduct. I believe
they are the true, and the only true ones.

They who juftify the frequent interruptions, which
at length wholly difabled him from proceeding, attri-
bute their conduct to a very different interpretation
of his motives. They fay, that through corruption, or
malice, or foliy, he was acting his part in a plot to
make his friend Mr. Fox pafs for a republican ; and
thereby to prevent the gracious intentions of his fo-
vereign from taking effe6t, which at that time. had
began to difclofe themielves in his favour *. This

is-
f.ariv/ -ji r

* To explain this, it will be neceflary to advert to a para-,
graph which appeared in a paper in the minority interefl Tome
time before this debate. " A very dark intrigue has lately been
" difcovered, the authors of which are well known to us.; brtt
" until the glorious day fhall come, when it will not be a
" LIBEL to tell the TRUTH, we muft not be fo regardlefs of
" our own fafety, as to publifh their names. We will, how-
" ever, ftate the fad, leaving it to the ingenuity of our readers'
" to diicover what we dare not publifh.

" Since the bufmefs of the armament againft Rufiia has been
" under difcufiion, a great perfonage has been heard to fay, " that
" he was not fo wedded to Mr. PITT, as not to be very willing
" to give his confidence to Mr. Fox, if the latter mould be
" able, in a crifis like the prefent, to conduct: the government
" of the country with greater advantage to the public."

" This patriotic declaration immediately alarmed the fwarm
" of courtly infects that live only in the funfhine of minifterial
" favour. It was thought to be the forerunner of the difmif-
" fion of Mr. PITT, and every engine was fet at work for the.
" purpofe of preventing fuch an event. The principal engine
" employed on this occafion was CALUMNY. It was whif-
" pered in the ear of a great perfonage, that Mr. Fox was the
" laft man in England to be truiled by a KING, becaufe he
" was by PRINCIPLE a REPUBLICAN, and consequently an
" enerny to riONARCHY.

" In the difcuflion of the Quebec bill which flood for yefter-

" day, it was the intention of fome perfons to conneft with this

" fubjedl the French Revolution, in hopes that Mr. Fox would

" be warmed by a coliifion with Mr. Burke, and induced tode-

C 4. «• fen4

is a pretty ferious charge. This, on Mr. Burke's
part, would be fomething more than miftakej
fomething worfe than formal irregularity. Any
contumely, any outrage is readily paflfed over, by
the indulgence which we all owe to fudden paffion.
Thefe things are foon forgot upon occafions in
which all men are fo apt to forget themfelves. De-
liberate injuries, to a degree muft be remembered,
becaufe they require deliberate precautions to be
fecured againft their return.

I am authorized to fay for Mr. Burke, that he
confiders that caufe affigned for the outrage offered
to him, as ten times worfe than the outrage itfelf.
There is fuch a ftrange confufion of ideas on this
fubjecl, that it is far more difficult to underftand
the nature of the charge, than to refute it when
underftood. Mr. Fox's friends were, it feems,
feized with a fudden panic terror left he Ihould

«' fend that revolution in which fo much power was taken
" from, and fo little left in, the crown.

" Had Mr. Fox fallen into the fnare, his fpeech on the occa-
« fion would have been laid before a great perfonage, as a
" proof that a man who could defend fuch a revolution, might
" be a very good republican, but could not poffibly be a friend
«' to monarchy.

" But thofe who laid the fnare were difappointed ; for Mr.
f ' Fox, in the fhort converfation which took place yefterday in
" the houfe of commons faid, that he confeffedly had thought
te favorably of the French revolution ; but that moft certainly
«' he never had, either in parliament or out of parliament, pror
" feffed or defended republican principles."

•^Argus, April azd, 1791.

Mr. Burke canr.ot anfwer for the truth, nor prove the falfe-
hood of the ftory given by the friends of the party in this paper.
He only knows that an opinion of its being well or ill authen-
ticated had no influence on his conduft. He meant only, to the
beft of his power, to guard the public againft the ill defigns of
factions out of doors. What Mr. Burke did in parliament could
hardly have been intended to draw Mr. Fox into any declara-
tions unfavourable to his principles, fmce (by the account of thofe
who are his friends) he had long before effectually prevented
the fuccefs of any fuch fcandalous defigns. Mr. Fox's friends
have themfelves dene away that imputation on Mr, Burke.

pafs

C *5 )

pafs for a republican, I do not think they had any
ground for this apprehenfion. But let us admit
they had. What was there in the Quebec bill, ra-
ther than in any other, which could fubject him or
them to that imputation ? Nothing in a difcuffion
of the French conftitution, which might arife on
the Quebec bill, could tend to make Mr. Fox
pafs for a republican ; except he ihould take oc-
cafion to extol that ftate of things in France, which
affects to be a republic or a confederacy of re-
publics. If fuch an encomium could make any
unfavourable impreftlon on the king's mind, furely
his voluntary panegyrics on that event, not fo much
introduced as intruded into other debates, with
which they had little relation, muft have produced
that effect: with much more certainty, and much
greater force. The Quebec bill, at worft, was only
one of thofe opportunities, carefully fought, and in-
duftrioufly improved by himfelf. Mr. Sheridan had
already brought forth a panegyric on the French
fyftem in a ftill higher ftrain, with full as little de-
mand from the nature pf the bufmefs before the
houfe, in a fpeech too good to be fpeedily forgot-
ten. Mr. Fox followed him without any direct call
from the fubject matter, and upon the fame ground.
To canvafs the merits of the French conftitution
on the Quebec bill could not draw forth any opi-
nions which were not brought forward before, with
no fmall oftentation, and with very little of ne-
ceflity, or perhaps of propriety. What mode, or
what time of difcuffmg the conduct of the French
faction in England would not equally tend to kindle
this enthufiafm, and afford thofe occafions for pane-
gyric, which, far from fhunning, Mr. Fox has always
induftrioufly fought ? He himfelf faid very truly, in
the debate, that no artifices were neceffary to draw
from him his opinions upon that fubject. But to
fall upon Mr, Burke for making an ufe, at worft

not

( 26 )

not more irregular, of the fame liberty, is tan--
tamount to a plain declaration, that the topic of
France is tabooed or forbidden ground to Mr. Burke,
and to Mr. Burke alone. But furely Mr. Fox is
not a republican; and what fhould hinder him,
when fuch a difcuflion came on, from clearing him-
felf unequivocally (as his friends fay he had done
near a fortnight before) of all fuch imputations ?
Inftead of being a difadvantage to him, he would
have defeated ail his enemies, and Mr. Burke, fmce
he has thought proper to reckon him amongft
them.

But it feems, fome news-paper or other had im-
puted to him republican principles, on occafion of
his conduct upon the Quebec bill. Suppofing Mr.
Burke to have feen thefe news-papers (which is to
fuppofe more than- 1 believe to be true) I would afk,
when did the news-papers forbear to charge Mr. Fox,
or Mr. Burke himfelf, with republican principles, or
any other principles which they thought could render
both of them odious, fometimes to one defcription
of people, fometimes to another ? Mr. Burke, fmce
the publication of his pamphlet, has been a thoufand
times charged in the news-papers with holding de-
fpotic principles. He could not enjoy one moment
of domeftic quiet, he could not perform the leaft
particle of public duty, if he did not altogether
difregard the language of thofe libels. But how-
ever his fenfibility might be affected by fuch abufe,
it would in him have been thought a moil ridicu-
lous reafon for {hutting up the mouths of Mr. Fox,
or Mr. Sheridan, fo as to prevent their delivering
their fentiments of the French revolution, — that
forfooth, " the news-papers had lately charged Mr.
" Burke with being an enemy to liberty."

I allow that thole gentlemen have privileges to

which Mr. Burke has no claim. But their friends

ought to plead thofe privileges -, and not to affign bad

i reafons,

reafons, on the principle of what is fair between
man and man, and thereby to put themfelves on a
level with thofe who can Ib eafily refute them. Let
them fay at once that his reputation is of no value,
and that he has no call to aflert it -, but that theirs
Js of infinite concern to the party and the public ;
and to that ccnfkleration he ought to facrifice all
his opinions, and all his feelings.

In that language I fhould hear a ftyle corre-
fpondent to the proceeding ; lofty, indeed, but plain
and confident. Admit, however, for a moment, and
merely for argument, that this gentleman had as
good a right to continue as they had to begin thefe
difcufiions, in ctndour and equity they muft allow
that their voluntary defcant in praife of the French
constitution was as much an oblique attack on Mr.
Burke, as Mr. Burke's enquiry into the foundation
of this encomium could poffibly be conftrued into
an imputation upon them. They well knew, that
he felt like other men ; and of courfe he would
think it mean and unworthy, to decline afferting in
his place, and in the front of able adverfaries, the
principles of what he had penned in his clofet, and
without an opponent before him. They could not
but be convinced, thac declamations of this kind
would rouze him ; that he muft think, coming
from men of their calibre, they were highly mif-
chievous ; that they gave countenance to bad men,
and bad defigns; and, though he was aware that the
handling fuch matters in parliament was delicate,
yet he was a man very likely, whenever, much againft
his will, they were brought there, to refolve, that
there they Ihouid be thoroughly lifted. Mr. Fox,
early in the preceding fefTion, had public notice
fiom Mr. Burke of the light in which he con-
jQdered every attempt to introduce the example j
of France into the politics of this country ; and I
of his refolution to break with his belt friends^

and

/ and to join with his word enemies to prevent it. He
hoped, that no fuch neccffity would ever exiil. But
in cafe it fhould, his determination was made. The
party knew perfectly that he would at leaft defend
himfelf. He never intended to attack Mr. Fox,
nor did he attack him directly or indirectly. His
fpeech kept to its matter. No perfonality was
employed even in the remoteft allufion. He never
did impute to that gentleman any republican prin-
ciples, or any other bad principles or bad conduct
whatfoever. It was far from his words; it was far
from his heart. It mufl be remembered, that not-
wkhftanding Mr. Fox, in order to fix on Mr. Burke,
an unjuftifiable change of opinion, and the foul
crime of teaching a fet of maxims to a boy, anq
afterwards, when thefe maxims became adult in his!
mature age, of abandoning both the difciple anc$
the doctrine, Mr. Burke never attempted, in any
one particular, either to criminate or to recrimi-
nate. It may be faid, that he had nothing of the
kind in his power. This he does not controvert.
He certainly had it not in his inclination. That

fentleman had as little ground for the charges which
e was fo eafily provoked to make upon him.

The gentlemen of the party (I include Mr. Fox)
have been kind enough to confider the difpute
brought on by this bufmefs, and the confequent
reparation of Mr. Burke from their corps, as a
matter of regret and uneafinefs. I cannot be of
opinion, that by his exdufion they have had any
lofs at all. A man whofe opinions are fo very ad-
verfe to theirs, adverfe, as it was expreffed, " as
*( pole to pole," fo mifchievoufly as well as fo di-
rectly adverfe, that they found themfelves under the /
neceffity of folemnly difclaiming them in full parlia-.J
ment, fuch a man muft ever be to them a moil im4f
feemly and unprofitable incumbrance. A co-opera-
tion with him could only ferve to embarrafs them in

ati

all their councils. They have befides publickly re-
prefented him as a man capable of abufing the doci-
lity and confidence of ingenuous youth ; and, for a /
bad reafon, or for no reafon, of difgracing his whole/
public life by a icandalous contradiction of every onef
of his own acts, writings, and declarations. If thefc
charges be true, their excluiion of fuch a perfon
from their body is a circumflance which does equal
honour to their juftice and their prudence. If they
cxpn is a degree of fenfibility in being obliged to
execute this wife and juft fentence, from a conli-
deration of fome amiable or fome pleafant quali-
ties which in his private life their former friend may
happen to poflefs, they add, to the praife of their
wifdom and firmnefs, the merit of great tendernefe
of heart, and humanity of difpofition.
/"On their ideas, the new Whig party have, in my
/opinion, acted as became them. The author of
| the Reflections, however, on his part, cannot, with-
out great fhame to himfelf, and without entailing
\ cverlafting difgrace on his pofterity, admit the truth
or juftice of the charges which have been made
upon him ; or allow that he has in thofe Reflections
difcovered any principles to which honeft men are
bound to declare, not a fhade or two of difient, but
a total fundamental oppofition. He muit believe,
if he does not mean wilfully to abandon his caufe
and his reputation, that principles fundamentally at
variance with thofe of his book, are fundamentally
falfe. What thofe principles, the antipodes to his,
really are, he can only difcover from that contrariety.
,He is very unwilling to fuppofe, that the doctrines
/ of fome books lately circulated are the principles
I of the party ; though, from the vehement declara-
' tions againtl his opinions, he is at fome lofs how to
judge otherwife.

For the prefent, my plan does not render it ne-
ctary to fay any thing further concerning the me-
rits

( 30 )

rits cither of the one fet of opinions or the other.
The author would have difcuffed the merits of
both in his place, but he was not permitted to
do fo.

I pafs to the next head of charge, Mr. Burke's
inconfiftency. It is certainly a great aggravation
of his fault in embracing falfe opinions, that in
doing fo he is not fuppofed to fill up a void,
but that he is guilty of a dereliction of opinions
;•' that are true and laudable. This is the great
gift of the charge againft him. It is not fo much
that he is wrong in his book (that however is
alledged alfo) as that he has therein belyed his
whole life. I believe, if he could venture to va-
lue himfelf upon any thing, it is on the virtue o
confiftency that he would value himfelf the moft.
Strip him of this, and you leave him naked indeed.

In the cafe of any man who had written fome-
thing, and fpoken a great deal, upon very multifa-

i

rious matter, during upwards of twenty-five years \
public fervice, and in as great a variety of import-
ant events as perhaps have ever happened in the
fame number of years, it would appear a little hard,
in order to charge fuch a man with inconfiftency,
to fee collected by his friend, a fort of digeft of
his fayings, even to fuch as were merely fportive
and jocular. This digeft, however, has been
made, with equal pains and partiality, and without \
bringing out thofe paflages of his writings which j
might tend to fhew with what reftrictions any ex-/
prefllons, quoted from him, ought to have beeri
underftood. From a great ftatefman he did not
quite expect this mode of inquifition. If it only
appeared in the w >rks of common pamphleteers,
Mr. Burke might fafely truft to his reputation.
When thus urged, he ought, perhaps, to do a little
more. It fhall be as little as poffible, for I hope
not much is wanting. To be totally filent on his

charges

charges would not be refpectful to Mr. Fox. Ac-
culations fometimes derive a weight from the per-
fons who make them, to which they are not en-
tided from their matter.

He who thinks, that the Britifh conftitntion ought
to confift of the three members, of three very dif-
ferent natures, of which it does actually confift, and ,
thinks it his duty to preferve each of thofe mem- '
bers in its proper place, and with it's proper pro-
portion of power, mufl (as each lhall happen to be
attacked) vindicate the three feveral parts on the
feveral principles peculiarly belonging to them. He
cannot uflert the democratic part on the princi-
ples on which monarchy is fupported ; nor can he
fupport monarchy on the principles of democracy;
nor can he maintain ariftocracy on the grounds
of the one or of the other, or of both. All thefej
he muft fupport on grounds that are totally differ-
ent, though practically they may be, and happily!
with us they are, brought into one harmonious body./
A man could not be confiftent in defending fuch//
various, and, at firft view, difcordant parts of ai/
mixed conftitution, without that fort of inconfift-/]
ency with which Mr. Burke (lands charged.

As any one of the great members of this conftitu-
tion happens to be endangered, he that is a friend to
all of them choofes and prefles the topics necefiary
for the fupport of the part attacked, with all the
ftrength, the earneftnefs, the vehemence, with all the
power of ftating, of argument, and of colouring, which
he happens to poflefs, and which the cafe demands.
He is not to embarrafs the minds of his hearers, or
to encumber, or overlay his fpeech, by bringing
into view at once (as if he were reading an aca-
demic lecture) all that may and ought, when a juft
occafion prefents itfelf, to be faid in favour of the
other members. At that time they are out of the
«ourt ; there Js no queftion concerning them.

Whilft

Whilft he oppofes his defence on the part where
the attack is made, he prefumes, that for his regard
to the juft rights of all the reft, he has credit in every
candid mind. He ought not to apprehend, that his
raifmg fences about popular privileges this day, will
infer that he ought, on the next, to concur with thofe
who would pull down the throne : becaufe on the
next he defends the throne, it ought not to be fup-
pofed that he has abandoned the rights of the
people.

A man who, among various objects of his equal
regard, is fecure of fome, and full of anxiety for
the fate of others, is apt to go to much greater
lengths in his preference of the objects of his imme-
diate folicitude than Mr. Burke has ever done. A
man fo circumftanced often feems to undervalue, to
vilify, almoft to reprobate and difown, thofe that are
out of danger. This is the voice of nature and
truth, and not of inconfiftency and falfe pretence.
The danger of any thing very dear to us, removes,
for the moment, every other affection from the
mind. When Priam had his whole thoughts em-
ployed on the body of his Hector, he repels with
indignation, and drives from him with a thoufand
reproaches, his furviving fons, who with an officious
piety crouded about him to offer their affiftance.
A good critic (there is no better than Mr. Fox)
would fay, that this is a mafter-ftroke, and marks a
deep understanding of nature in the father of poetry.
He would defpife a Zoilus, who would conclude
from this paffage that Homer meant to reprefent
this man of affliction as hating or being indifferent
and cold in his affections to the poor reliques of
his houfe, or that he preferred a dead carcafe to his
living children.

Mr. Burke does not ftand in need of an allowance
of this kind, which, if he did, by candid critics ought
to be granted to him. If the principles of a mixed

conftitution

( 33 )

conftitution be admitted, he wants no more to juftify
to confiftency every thing he has faid and done during
the courfe of a political life juft touchiag to its
clofe. I believe that gentleman has kept him-
felf more clear of running into the fafliion of wild
vifionary theories, or of feeking popularity through
every means, than any man perhaps ever did in the
lame fituation,

He was the firft man who, on the huftings, at a\
popular election, rejected the authority 'of inftruc- )
tions . from conftituents j or who, in any place,/
has argued fo fully againft it. Perhaps the dif-
credit into which that doctrine of compulfive in-
ftructions under our conftitution is fince fallen, may
be due, in a great degree, to his oppofing himfelf
to it in that manner, and on that occafion.

The reforms in reprefentation, and the bills for}
fhortening the duration of parliaments, he uniformly /
and fteadily oppofed for many years together, inf
contradiction to many of his belt friends. Thefe
friendsj however, in his better days, when they had
more to hope from his fervice and more to fear
from his lofs than now they have, never chofe
to find any inconfiftency between his acts and ex-
preflions in favour of liberty, and his votes on thofc
queftions. But there is a time for all things.

Againft the opinion of many friends, even againft
the folicitacion of fome of them, he oppofed thofe
of the church clergy, who had petitioned the Houfe
of Commons to be difchnrged from the fubfcrip-
tion. Although he fupported the diffenters in their
petition for the indulgence which he had refufed to
the clergy of the eftablifhed church, in this, as he
was not guilty of it, fo he was not reproached with
inconfiftency. At the fame time he promoted, and
againft the wifh of feveral, the claufe that gave
the diflenting teachers another fubfcription in the
D place

( 54 )

place of that which was then taken away. Neither
at that time was the reproach of inconfiftency
brought againft him. People could then diftinguifh
between a difference in conduct, under a variation
of circumftancesj and an inconfiftency in principle.
It was not then thought neceffary to be freed of him
as of an incumbrance.

Thefe inftances, a few among many, are pro-
duced as an anfwer to the infmuation of his
having purfued high popular courfes, which in
his late book he has abandoned. Perhaps in his
whole life he has never omitted a fair occafion, with
whatever rifqne to him of obloquy as an indivi-
dual, with whatever detriment to his intereft as a
member of oppofition, to affert the very fame doc-^
trines which appear in that book. He told the
Houfe, upon an important occafion, and pretty early
in his fervice, that " being warned by the ill effect
" of a contrary procedure in great examples, he
" had taken his ideas of liberty very low ; in order
" that they fhould ftick to him, and that he might
" ftick to them to the end of his life."

At popular elections the moft rigorous cafuifts
will remit a little of their feverity. They will
allow to a candidate fome unqualified effufions
in favour of freedom, without binding him to
adhere to them in their utmoft extent. Bvt Mr.
Burke put a more ftrict rule upon himfelf than
moft moralifts would put upon others. At
his firft offering himfelf to Briftol, where he was
almoft fure he Ihould not obtain, on that or any oc-
cafion, a fmgle Tory vote, (in fact he did obtain but
one) and refted wholly on the Whig intereft, he
thought himfelf bound to tell to the electors, both
before and after his election, exactly what a repre-
fentative they had to expect in him.

" The diftinguijhing part of our conftitution (h/*

" faid)

( 35 )

e{ faid) is its liberty. To preferve that liberty in-
" violate, is the peculiar duty and proper truft of
f. member of the houfe of commons. But the li-
" berty, the only liberty I mean, is a liberty con- \
<( nedbed with order, and that not only exifts with
" order and virtue, but cannot exift at all without
" them. It inheres in good and fteady govern-
" ment, as in itsfubftance and vital principle."

The liberty to which Mr. Burke declared him-
felf attached, is not French liberty. That liberty
is nothing but the rein given to vice and confuiion.
Mr. Burke was then, as he was at the writing of his
Reflections, awfully imprefied with the difficulties
arifmg from the complex ftate of our conftitution
and our empire, and that it might require, in dif-
ferent emergencies different forts of exertions, and
the fucceffive call upon all the various principles
which uphold andjuftify it. This will appear from
what he faid at the clofe of the poll. —

" To be a good member of parliament is, let me
<c tell you, no eafy tafkj efpecially at this time,
«' when there is fo ftrong a difpofition to run into
s< the perilous extremes offer-vile compliance, or
f< wild popularity. To unite circumipectbn with
•*' vigour, is abfolutely neceffary ; but it is extreme-
" ly difficult. We are now members for a rich
" commercial city ; this city, however, is but a part
<f of a rich commercial nation, the interefts of which
" are various, multiform) and intricate. We are
" members for that great nation which, however, is
" itfelf but part of a great empire, extended by our
" virtue and our fortune to the fartheft limits of
" the eaft and of the weft. All thefe wide-fpread j
" interefts muft be confidered; muft be compared jl
*c muft be reconciled, if pofllble. We are members
" for a free country ; and furely we all know that
" the machine of a free conftitution is no fimple
D 2 a thing i

( 36 )

" thing; but as intricate and as ddicatey as it is
" valuable. We are members in a great and an-
" tient MONARCHY ; and iv e muft prefen-e religioujly
" the true legal rights of the fovereign, which form the
tc key-jlcne that binds together the noble and well-
f( conftrufted arch of our empire and our conftitittion.
" A conftitution made up of balanced powers, muft
<c ever be a critical thing. As fuch I mean to touch
" that part of it which comes within my reach."

In this manner Mr. Burke fpoke to his condi-
ments feventeen years ago. He fpoke, not like a
partizan of one particular member of our confti-
1 tution, but as a perfon ftrongly, and on principle,
attached to them all. He thought thefe great and
\efTential members ought to be preserved, and pre-
ferved each in its place ; and that the monarchy
ought not only to be fecured in its peculiar ex-
iftence, but in its pre-eminence too, as the prefid-
ing and connecting principle of the whole. Let it
be confidered, whether the language of his book,
printed in 1790, differs from his fpeech at Briftol
in 1774.

i "With equal juftice his opinions on the American
fwar are introduced, as if in his late work he had
(belied his conduct and opinions in the debates
which arofe upon that great event. On the Ameri-
can war he never had any opinions which he has feen
occafion to retract, or which he has ever retracted.
He indeed differs effentially from Mr. Fox as to the
caufe of that war. Mr. Fox has been pleafed to fay,
that the Americans rebelled, * becaufe they thought
c they had not enjoyed liberty enough.' This caufc
of the -war from him I have heard of for the firft time.
It is true that thofe who ftimulated the nation to
that meafure, did frequently urge this topic. They
contended, that the Americans had from the begin-
ning aimed at independence j that from the begin-

( 37 )

ning they meant wholly 'to throw off the authority \
of the crown, and to break their connexion with '
the parent country. This Mr. Burke never believed. /
When he moved his fecond conciliatory propofition
in the year 1776, he entered into the difcufiion of
this point at very great length ; and from nine fe-
veral heads of preemption, endeavored to prove the
charge upon that people not to be true.

If the principles of all he has faid and wrote
on the occafion, be viewed with common tem-
per, the gentlemen of the party will perceive, that
on a fuppofition that the Americans had re
belled merely in order to enlarge their liberty,
Mr. Burke would have thought very differently o
the American caufe. What might have been in the
ffecret thoughts of fome of their leaders it is im-
Vpoflible to fay. As far as a man, fo locked up as
Dr. Franklin, could be expected to communicate his
ideas, I believe he opened them to Mr. Burke. It
was, I think, the very day before he fet out for Ame-
rica, that a very long converfation pa (Ted between
them, and with a greater air of opennefs on the Doc-
tor's fide, than Mr. Burke had obferved in him be-
fore. In this difcourfe Dr. Franklin lamented
with apparent fincerity, the feparation
feared was inevitable between Great Britain
colonies. He certainly {poke of it as an event which
gave him the greateft concern. America, he faid,
would never again fee fuch happy days as ihe had
pafled under the protection of England. He cbferved,
that ours was the only inftance of a great empire, in
which the moil diftant parts and members had been
as well governed as the metropolis and its vicinage :
But that the Americans were going to lole the means
which fecured to them this rare and precious advan-
tage. The queftion wjth them was not whether they
were to remain as they had been before the troubles,
for better, he allowed they could not hope to be;

'

i in mm De-
mented, and\
>n which he/
•itain and hen

/'but whether they were to give up fo hap^y a fitua-
\tion without a ftruggle ? Mr. Burke had feveral
other converfations with him about that time, in none
of which, foured and exafperated as his mind certainly
was, did he difcover any other wilh in favour of
America than for a fecurity to its ancient condi-/
tion. Mr. Burke's converfation with other Ameri-
cans was large indeed, and his enquiries extenfive and
diligent. Trufting to the refult of all thefe means
of information, but trufling much more in the pub-
lic preemptive indications I have juft referred to,
and to the reiterated folemn declarations of their
affemblies, he always firmly believed that they were
ji purely on the defenfive in that rebellion. He con-
fidered the Americans as Handing at that time, and
in that controverfy, in the fame relation to Eng-
land, as England did to king James the Second, in
1688. He believed, that they had taken up arms
from one motive only ; that is our attempting
to tax them without their confent; to tax them
for the purpofes of maintaining civil and military
eftablifhments. If this attempt of ours could have
been practically eftablifhed, he thought with them,
that their aflemblies would become totally ufelefs ;
that under the iyftem of policy which was then

frfued, the Americans could have no fort of fe-
rity for their laws or liberties, or for any part of
^m ; and, that the very cireumftance of our free-
— m would have augmented the weight of their
flavery.

Confidering the Americans on that defenfive foot-
ing, he thought Great Britain ought inftantly to
have clofed wkh them by the repeal of the taxing
act. He was of opinion that our general rights
over that country would have been preferved by
this timely conceflion*. When, inflead of this,

* See his fpeech on American taxation., the i pth of April, 1 774.

a Bfofton

X 39 )

a Bofton port bill, a MafTachufet's charter bill,
a Filhciy bill, an Intercourfe bill, I know not
how many hcftile bills rufhed out like Ib many
tempefts from all points of the compafs, and
were accompanied firft with great fleets and ar-
mies of Englifh, and followed afterwards with great
bodies of foreign troops, he thought that their
caufe grew daily better, becaufe daily more defen-
five ; and that ours, becaufe daily more offenfive,
grew daily worfe. He therefore in two motions,
in two fucceflive years, propofed in parliament;
many concefiions beyond what he had reafon toj
think in the beginning of the troubles would everj
be ferioufly demanded.

So circumftanced, he certainly never could and
never did wifh the colonifts to be fubdued by
arms. He was fully perfuaded, that if fuch fhould
be the event, they muft be held in that fubdued
ftate by a great body of {landing forces, and per-
haps of foreign forces. He was ftrongly of opinion,
that fuch armies, firft victorious over Englifhmen,
in a conflict for Englifh coriftitutional rights and
privileges, and afterwards habituated (though in
America) to keep an Englifh people in a ftate i
of abject fubjection, would prove fatal in the end j
to the liberties of England itfelf ; that in the mean '
time this military fyftem would lie as an oppreffive 1
burthen upon the national finances j that it would \
conftantly breed and feed new difcuflions, full of ,
heat and acrimony, leading poffibly to a new feries
of wars ; and that foreign powers, whilft we con-
tinued in a ftate at once burthened and diffracted,
muft at length obtain a decided fuperiority over us.
On what part of his late publication, or on what
exprefllon that might have efcaped him in that
work, is any man authorized to charge Mr. Burke
with a contradiction to the line of his conduct, ,
and to the current of his doctrines on the American j
D 4 war ?

( 40 )

war ? The pamphlet is in the hands of his accufers,
let them point out the paflage if they can.

Indeed, the author has been well fifted and fcru-
tinized by his friends. He is even called to an
account for every jocular and light expreffion. A
ludicrous picture which he made with regard to
a pafiage in the fpeech of a * late minifter, has
been brought up againft him. That paflage con-
tained a lamentation for the lofs of monarchy to the
Americans, after they had feparated from Great
Britain. He thought it to be unfeafonable, ill
judged, and ill forted with the circumftances of all
the parties. Mr. Burke, it feems, confidered it
ridiculous to lament the lofs of fome monarch or
other, to a rebel people, at the moment they had
for ever quitted their allegiance to theirs and our
fovereign; at the time when they had broken off
all connexion with this nation, and had allied them-
felves with its enemies. He certainly muft have
thought it opeli to ridicule : and, now that it is
recalled to his memory, (he had, J believe, whol-
ly forgotten the circumftance) he recollects that he
did treat it with fome levity. But is it a fair infe-
rence from a jeft on this unfeafonable lamentation,
that he was then an enemy to monarchy either in
this or in any other country ? The contrary per-
haps ought to be inferred, if any thing at all can
be- argued from pleafantries good or bad. Is it for
this reafon, or for any thing he has laid or done re-
lative to the American war, that he is to enter
into an alliance offenfive and defenfive with every
rebellion, in every country, under every circum-
ftance, and raifed upon whatever pretence? Is it
"becaufe he did not wifli the Americans to be fub-
dued by arms, that he muft be inconfiftent v;ith
Jiimfelf, if he reprobates the conduft of thofe fo-

* Lord Lanfclown.

tieties

( 4! )

cietics in England, who alledging no one act of tyT\
ranny or oppreffion, and complaining of no hoftile ]
attempt againft our antient laws, rights, and ulages, \
are now endeavouring to work the ckltruction of the j
crown of this kingdom, and the whole of its con-
ftitution? Is he obliged, from the concefiions he
wilhed to be made to the colonies, to keep any terms
with thofe clubs and federations, who hold out to us *•
as a pattern for imitation, the proceedings inJFrance,
in which a king, who had voluntarily and formally di- \
vetted himieif of the right of taxation, and of all |J
other fpecies of arbitrary power, has been dethroned ? /
— Is it becaufe Mr. Burke wilhed to have America
rather conciliated than vanquifhed, that he muft wifh
well to the army of republics which are fet up in
France; a country wherein not the people, but the
monarch was wholly on the defend ve (a poor, indeed,
and feeble defenfive) to preferve Jome fragments of
the royal authority againft a determined and defpe-
rate body of confpirators, whofe object it was, with
whatever certainty of crimes, with whatever hazard
of war and every other fpecies of calamity, to anni--,
hilate the whole of that authority; to level all ranks, >
orders, and diftinctions in the flate ; and utterly to ;
deftroy property, not more by their acts than in/
their principles ?

Mr. Burke has been alfo reproached with an in-
confiflency between his late writings and his former
conduct, becaufe he had propofed in parliament
feveral ceconomical, leading to feveral conftitutional
reforms. Mr. Burke thought, with a majority of
the Houfe of Commons, that the influence of the
crown at one time was too great ; but after his Ma-
jeity had by a gracious mefTage, and feveral fubfe-
quent acts of parliament, reduced it to a ftandard
which fatisfied Mr. Fox himfelf, and, apparently at
leaft, contented whoever wifhed to go fartheft in that
reduction, is Mr. Burke to allow that it would be right

for

C 41 )

for us to proceed to indefinite lengths upon that fub-
ject? that it would therefore bejuftifiable in a people
owing allegiance to a monarchy, and profefiing to\
maintain it, not to reduce, but wholly to take away all \
prerogative, and «// influence whatfoever ? — Muft his
having made, in virtue of a plan of oeconomical re-
gulation, a reduction of the influence of the crown,
compel him to allow, that it would be right in the
French or in us to bring a king to fo abject a ftate,
as in function not to be fo relpectable as an under
fhcrifF, but in pe-rfon not to differ from the condi-
tion of a mere prifoner ? One would think that fuch)
a thing as a medium had never been heard of in tlW
moral world.

This mode of arguing from your having done
any thing in a certain line, to the neceffity of do-
ing every thing, has political ccnfequences of other
moment than thofe of a logical fallacy. If no man
can propofe any diminution or modification of an
invidious or dangerous power or influence in go-
vernment, without entitling friends turned into
adverfaries, to argue him into the deftruction of
all prerogative, and to a fpoliation of the whole
patronage of royalty, I do not know what can
more effectually deter perfons of fober minds from
engaging in any reform ; nor how the worft enemies
to the liberty of the fubject could contrive any me-
thod more fit to bring all correctives on the power
of the crown into fuipicion and difrepute.

If, fay his accufers, the dread of too great influence
in the crown of Great Britain could juftify the degree
of reform which he adopted, the dread of a return
under the defpotifm of a monarchy might juftify the
people of France in going much further, and reduc-
ing monarchy to its prefent nothing. Mr. Burke does
pot allow, that a furrlcient argument ad hominem is
inferable from thefe premifes. If the horror of the
exceffes of an abfolute monarchy furnifhes a reafon for

abolifhing

( 43 )

abolifKing it, no monarchy once abfolute (all have been
fo at one period or other) could ever be limited. It
mult be deftroyed ; otherwife no way could be found
to quiet the fears of thofe who were formerly fub-
jected to that fway. But the principle of Mr. Burked
proceeding ought to lead him to a very different
conclufion ;-— to this conclufion, — that a monar-X
chy is a thing perfectly fufceptible of reform ; per- V
fectly fufceptible of a balance of power ; and that, i;
when reformed and balanced, for a great country, it /
is the belt of all governments. The example of our"
country might have led France, as it has led him,
to perceive that monarchy is not only reconcila-
ble to liberty, but that it may be rendered a great
and ftable fecurity to its perpetual enjoyment. No
correctives which he propofed to the power of the
crown could lead him to approve of a plan of
a republic (if fo it may be reputed) which has
no correctives, and which he believes to be inca-
pable of admitting any. No principle of Mr.
Burke's conduct or writings obliged him, from
confiftency, to become an advocate for an ex-
change of mifchiefs ; no principle of his could .
compel him to juftify the fetting up in the place j
of a mitigated monarchy, a new and far more/
defpotic power, under which there is no trace of?
liberty, except what appears in confufion a*id iri
crime.

Mr. Burke does not admit that the faction pre-
dominant in France have aboiilhed their monarchy
and the orders of their flate, from any dread of arbi-
trary power that lay heavy on the minds of the peo-
ple. It is not very long lince he has been in that
country. Whilft there he converfed with many de-
fcriptions of its inhabitants. A few perfons of rank
did, he allows, difcover ftrong and manifeft tokens of
fuch a fpirit of liberty, as might be expected one
day to break all bounds. Such gentlemen have

fincc

( 44 )

/mce had more reafon to repent of their want of
forefight than I hope any of the fame clafs will ever
have in this country. But this fpirit was far from
general even amongft the gentlemen. As to the
lower orders and thofe a little above them, in
whofe name the prefent powers domineer, they
were far from difcovering any fort of diflatisfaflion
with the power and prerogatives of the crown.

SThat vain people were rather proud of them : they
rather defpifed the Englifh for not having a mo-
narch pofieffed of fuch high and perfect authority.
: <?bey had felt nothing from Lettres de Cachet. The
\ Baftile could infpire no horrors into them. This
was a treat for their betters. It was by art and
impulfe i it was by the finifter ufe made of a fea-
fon of fcarcity ; it was under an infinitely diverfified
fucceffion of wicked pretences, wholly foreign to
the queftion of monarchy or ariftocracy, that this
light people were infpired with their prefent fpirit of
levelling. Their old vanity was led by art to take
another turn : It was dazzled and feduced by mi-
litary liveries, cockades, and epaulets, until the
French populace was led to become the willing,
but flill the proud and fhoughtlefs inflrument and
victim of another domination. Neither did that
people defpife, or hate, or fear their nobility. On
the contrary, they valued themfelves on the gene-
rous qualities which diftinguifhed the chiefs of then-1
nation.

So far as to the attack on Mr. Burke, in ccnfe-
quence of his reforms.

To fhew that he has in his laft publication
abandoned thofe principles of liberty which have
given energy to his youth, and in fpite of his
cenlbrs will afford repofe and confolation to
his declining age, thofe who have thought proper
in parliament to declare againft his book, ought
to have produced fomething in it, which di-
rectly

( 45 )

or indirectly militates with any rational plan
of free government. It is fomething extraordinary,
that they whofe memories have fo well ferved them
with regard to light and ludicrous expreflions which
years had configned to oblivion, fhould not have
been able to quote a fingle paflage in a piece ib
lately publifhed, which contradicts any thing he has
formerly ever laid in a flyle either ludicrous or
ferious. They quote his former fpeeches, and his ;
former votes, but not one fyllable from the book./
It is only by a collation of the one with the other
that the alledged inconfiftency can be eftablifhed.
But as they are unable to cite any fuch contradictory
paflage, fo neither can they fhew any thing in the
general tendency and fpirit of the whole work un-
favourable to a rational and generous fpirit of li-
berty j unlefs a warm oppofition to the fpirit of \
levelling, to the fpirit of impiety, to the fpirit of •
profcription, plunder, murder, and cannibalifm, be |
adverle to the true principles of freedom.

The author of that book is fuppofed to have
pafied from extreme to extreme ; but he has always j
kept himfelf in a medium. This charge is not fo
wonderful. It is in the nature of things, that they
who are in the centre of a circle fhould appear
directly oppofed to thofe who view them from any
part of the circumference. In that middle point,
however, he will flill remain, though he may hear
people who themfelves run beyond Aurora and the
Ganges, cry out, that he is at the extremity of the
weft.

In the fame debate Mr. Burke was reprefented
as arguing in a manner which implied that the Bri-
tifh conftitution could not be defended, but by abu-
fmg all republics antient and modern. He faid no-
thing to give the leaft ground for fuch a cenfure.
He never abufed all republics. He has never pro-
felfed himfelf a friend or an enemy to republics or

to

to monarchies in the abftract. He thought that the
circumftances and habits of every country, which it
is always perilous and productive of thegreaieft cala-
mities to force, are to decide upon the form of its
government. There is nothing in his nature, his
temper, or his faculties, which fhould make him an
enemy to any republic modern or antient. Far from
it. He has ftudied the form and fpirit of republic§
very early in life ; he has ftudied them with great
attention ; and with a mind undifturbed by affection
or prejudice. He is indeed convinced that the fci-
ence of government would be poorly cultivated
without that ftudy. But the refult in his mind
from that inveftigation has been, and is, that neither
England nor France, without infinite detriment to
them, as well in the event as in the experiment,
could be brought into a republican form ; but that \
every thing republican which can be introduced j
with fafety into either of them, mufl be built upon 1
a monarchy; built upon a real, not a nominal mo- /
narchy, as its ejjential bafis ; that all fuch inftitu-
rions, whether ariftocratic or democratic, muft ori-
ginate from their crown, and in all their proceed-
ings muft refer to it ; that by the energy of that main
Ipring alone thofe republican parts muft be fet in ac-
tion, and from thence muft derive their whole le-
gal .effect, (as amongft us they actually do) or the
whole will fall into confufion. Thefe republican
members have no other point but the crown in
which they can poffibly unite.

This is the opinion expreffed in Mr. Burke'*
book. He has never varied in that opinion fince \
he came to years of difcretion. But furely, if at -y
any time of his life he had entertained other no-
tions, (which however he has never held or profefied
to hold) the horrible calamities brought upon a great
people, by the wild attempt to force their country
into a republick, might be more than fufficient to

undecejve

( 47 )

undeceive his understanding, and to free it for ever
from fuch deftructive fancies. He is certain, that
many, even in France, have been made fick of their
theories by their very fuccefs in realizing them.

To fortify the imputation of a defertion from his
principles, his conftant attempts to reform abufes,
have been brought forward. It is true, it has been
the bufmefs of his ftrength to reform abufes in
government ; and his laft feeble efforts are em-
ployed in a ftruggle againft them. Politically he
has lived in that element j politically he will die
in it. Before he departs, T will admit for him that
he deferves to have all his titles of merit brought
forth, as they have been, for grounds of con-
demnation, if one word, juftifying or fupporting
abufes of any fort, is to be found in that book
which has kindled fo much indignation in the
mind of a great man. On the contrary, it fpares
no exifling abufe. Its very purpofe is to make
war with abufes; not, indeed, to make war with
the dead, but with thofe which live, and flourish,
and reign.

The purpofe for which the abufes of govern-
ment are brought into view, forms a very ma-
terial confederation in the mode of treating them.
The complaints of a friend are things very differ-
ent from the invectives of an enemy. The charge
of abufes on the late monarchy of France, was
not intended to lead to its reformation, but to
juftify its deftruction. They who have raked into
all hiftory for the faults of kings, and who have ag-
gravated every fault they have found, have acted
confidently ; becaufe they acted as enemies. No
man can be a friend to a tempered monarchy who
bears a decided hatred to monarchy itfelf. He
who, at the prefent time, is favourable, or even
fair to that fyftem, muft act towards it as towards
a friend with frailties, who is under the profecution
§ of

( 48 )

of implacable foes. I think it a duty in that cafe,
not to inflame the public mind againft the obnoxi-
ous perfon, by any exaggeration of his faults. It is
our duty rather to palliate his errors and defects,
or to cad them into the lhade, and induftrioufly to
bring forward any good qualities that he may hap-
pen to poffefs. But when the man is to be amend-
ed, and by amendment to be preferred, then the
line of duty takes another direction. When his
fafety is effectually provided for, it then becomes the
office of a friend to urge his faults and vices with all
the energy of enlightened affection, to paint them
in their moft vivid colours, and to bring the moral
patient to a better habit. Thus I think with regard
to individuals j thus I think with regard to antient
and refpected governments and orders of men. A
fpirit of reformation is never more confident with
itfelf, than when it refufes to be rendered the means
of deftruction.

I fuppofe that enough is faid upon thefe heads
of accufation. One more I had nearly forgotten,
but I (hall foon difpatch it. The author of the Re-
flections, in the opening of the laft parliament, en-
tered on the Journals of the Houfe of Commons a
motion for a remonftrance to the crown, which is
fubftantially a defence of the preceding parlia- |
ment, that had been difiblved under difpleafure. It *
is a defence of Mr. Fox. It is a defence of the
Whigs. By what connection of argument, by
what affociation of ideas, this apology for Mr. Fox
and his party is, by him and them, brought to cri-
minate his and their apologift, I cannot eafily di-
vine. It is true, that Mr. Burke received no previous
encouragement from Mr. Fox, nor any the leaft
countenance or fupport at the time when the motion
was made, from him or from any gentleman of the
party, one only excepted, from whcfe friendfhip, on
that and on other occafions, he derives an honour

to

( 49 )

to which he muft be dull indeed to he infenfible *,
If than remonftrance therefore was a falfe or feeble
defence of the meafures of the party, they were in
no wife affected by it. It Hands on the Journals.
This fccures to it a permanence which the author
cannot expect to any other work of his. Let it
fpeak for itfelf to the prefent age, and to all pofte-
ritjr. The party had no concern in it; and it can
never be quoted againft them. But in the late debate
it was produced, not to clear the party from an im-
proper defence in which they had no fhare, but for
the kind purpofe of infmuating an inconfiftency be-
tween the principles of Mr. Burke's defence of the
diflblved parliament, and thofe on which he pro-
ceeded in his late Reflections on France.

It requires great ingenuity to make out fuch a
parallel between the two cafes, as to found a charge
of inconfiftency in the principles ailumed in arguing
the one and the other. What relation had Mr.
Fox«'s India bill to the conftitution of France ?
What relation had that conftitution to the queftion
of right, in an houfe of commons, to give or to
withhold its confidence from minifters, and to flate
that opinion to the crown ? What had this difcuf-
fion to do with Mr. Burke's idea in 1784, of the
ill confequences which muft in the end arife to the
crown from fetting up the commons at large as an
oppofite intereft to the commons in parliament?
What has this difcufllon to do with a recorded
warning to the people, of their rafhly forming a
precipitate judgment againft their repreientatives ?
"What had Mr. Burke's opinion of the danger of in-
troducing new theoretic language unknown to the
records of the kingdom, and calculated to excite
vexatious queftions, into a parliamentary proceed-

* Mr. Windham.

E ing,

( 5° )

Ing, to do with the French afiembly, which defies all
precedent, and places its whole glory in realizing
what had been thought the moft vifionary theories ?
What had this in common with the abolition of the
French monarchy, or with the principles upon which
the Englifh revolution was juftified ; a revolution in
which parliament, in all its acts and all its decla-
rations, religioufly adheres to f the form of found
words,' without excluding from private difcuffions,
fuch terms of art as mayferve to conduct an inquiry
for which none but private perfons are relponfible ?
Thefe were the topics of Mr. Burke's propofed re-
monftrance; all of which topics fuppofe the exift-
ence and mutual relation of our three eftates ; as
well as the relation of the Eaft India Company to
the crown, to parliament, and to the peculiar laws,
rights, and ufages of the people of Hindoftan ? What
reference, I fay, had thefe topics to the conftitution
of France, in which there is no king, no lords,
no commons, no India company to injure or fup-
port, no Indian empire to govern or opprefs ? What
relation had all or any of thefe, or any queftion
which could arife between the prerogatives of the
crown and the privileges of parliament, with the
cenfure of thofe factious perfons in Great Britain,
whom Mr. Burke ftates to be engaged, not in
favour of privilege againft prerogative, or of pre-
rogative againft privilege, but in an open attempt
againft our crown and our parliament; againft
our conftitution in church and ftate ; againft all the
parts and orders which compofe the one and the
other?

No perfons were more fiercely active againft
Mr. Fox, and againft the meafures of the houfe of
Commons diffolved in 1784, which Mr. Burke de-
fends in that remonftrance, than feveral of thofe re-
volution-makers, whom Mr. Burke condemns alike

in

itt His remonftrance, and in his book. Thefe revo-
lutionifts indeed may be well thought to vary in their
condud. He is, however; far from accufmg them,
in this variation, of the fmalleft degree of inconfifl-
ency. He is perfuaded, that they are totally indif-
ferent at which end they begin the demolition of the
conftitution. — Some are for commencing their ope-
rations with the deftruction of the civil powers, in
order the better to pull down the ectiefiaftical j
fome wifh to begin with the ecclefiaftical, in order
to facilitate the ruin of the civil ; fome would de-
llroy the houfe of commons through the crown j
fome the crown through the houfe of commons;
and fome would overturn both the one and the other
through what they call the people. But I believe
that this injured writer will think it not at all in- j
confident with his prefent duty, or with his former'
life, ftrenuoufly to oppoie all the various partizans
of deftruclion, let them begin where, or when, or
how they will. No man would fet his face more /
determinedly againft thofe who fhculd attempt to
deprive them, or any defcription of men, of the
rights they poflefs. No man would be more
fteady in preventing them from abufmg thofe rights
to the deftruction of that happy order under which
they enjoy them. As to their title to any thing
further, it ought to be grounded on the proof they
give of the fafcty with which power may be trufled
in their hands. When they attempt without difguife,
not to win it from our affections, but to force it from
our fears, they fhew, in the character of their means
of obtaining it, the ufe they would make of their do-
minion. That writer is too well read in men, not to
know how often the defire and defign of a tyrannic
domination lurks in the claim of an extravagant
liberty. Perhaps in the beginning it always difplays
itfelf in that manner. No man has ever affected
E 2 power

( 5' )

power which he did not hope from the favour of die
exifting government, in any other mode.

The attacks on the author's confiftency relative
to France, are (however grievous they may be to his
feelings) in a great degree external to him and to us,
and comparatively of little moment to die people
of England. The fubilantial charge upon him is
concerning his doctrines relative to the Revolution
of i6&8. Here it is, that they who fpeak in the
name of the party have thought proper to cen-
fure him the moft loudly, and with the greateil
afpcrity. Here they faftcn ; and, if they are right in
their fact, with fufficient judgment in their (elec-
tion. If he be guilty in this point he is equally
blameable, whether he is confiitent or not. If he
endeavours to delude his countrymen by a falfe re-
prefentation of the fpirit of that leading event, and
of the true nature and tenure of the government
formed in confequence of it, he is deeply refpon-
fiblej he is an enemy to the free conllitution of
the kingdom. But he is not guilty in any fenfe.
I maintain that in his Reflections he has ftated the
Revolution and the fcttiement upon dieir true prin-
ciples of legal reafon and conftitutional policy.

His authorities are the acts and declarations of
parliament given in their proper words. So far
as thefe go, nothing can be added to what he has
quoted. The queftion is, whether he has under-
ftood them rightly. I think they fpeak plain enough.
But we muft now fee whether he proceeds v/ith other
authority than his own conftructions ; and if he does,
on what fort of authority he proceeds. In this
part, his defence will not be made by argument,
but by wager of law. He takes his compurgators,
his vouchees, his guarantees, along with him. I
know, that he will not be fatisfied with a juftification
proceeding on general reafons of policy. He muft

be

( 53 )

• be defended on party grounds too ; or his caufe is not
fo tenable as I wifh it to appear. It muft be made
out for him, not only, that in his conftrucYion of
thefe public a6ts and monuments he conforms him-
felf to the rules of fair, legal, and logical interpre-
tation; but it muft be proved that his conftruc-
tion is in perfect harmony with that of the ancient
Whigs, to whom, againft the Sentence of the mo-
dern, on his part, I here appeal.

This July, it will be twenty-fix years* fmce he
became connected with a man whofe memory will
ever be precious to Englishmen of all parties, as
long as the ideas of honour and virtue, public
and private, are underftood and cherifhed in this
nation. That memory will be kept alive with par-
ticular veneration by all rational and honourable
Whigs. Mr. Burke entered into a connexion with
that party, through that man, at an age, far from
raw and immature ; at thole years when men are
all they are ever likely to become ; when he was in
the prime and vigour of his life \ when the powers
of his underftanding, according to their ftandard,
were at the beft j his memory exercifed ; his judg-
ment formed; and his reading, much frefher in the
recollection, and much readier in the application,
than now it is. He was at that time as likely as
moft men to know what were Whig and what
were Tory principles. He was in a fituation to
difcern what fort of Whig principles they enter-
tained, with whom it was his wifh to form an eter-
nal connexion. Foolilh he would have been at
that time of life (more fbolifh than any man who
undertakes a public truft would be thought) to ad-
here to a caufe, which he, amongft all thofe who were
engaged in it, had the leaft fanguine hopes of, as
a road to power.

* July i/th 1765.
E 3

( 54 )

There are who remember, that on the removal
of the Whigs in the year 1766, he was as free to
choofe another connexion as any man in the king-
dom. To put himfelf out of the way of the nego-
tiations which were then carrying on very eagerly,
and through many channels, with the Earl of Chat-
ham, he went toll eland very foon after the change
of miniftry, and did not return until the meeting of
parliament. He was at that time free from any
thing which looked like an engagement. He was
further free at the defire of his friends ; for the very
day of his return, the Marquis of Rockingham
wifhed him to accept an employment under the
new fyftem. He believes he might have had fuch
a fituation ; but again he cheerfully took his fate
with the party.

It would be a ferious imputation upon the pru-
dence of my friend, to have made even fuch trivial
facrifices as it was in his power to make, for prin-
ciples wiiich he did not truly embrace, or did" not
perfectly underftand. In either cafe the foily would
have been great. The queftion now is, whether,
when he firft practically profefled Whig principles,
he underftood what principles he profefled j and
whether, in his book, he has faithfully expreffed
them.

When he entered into the Whig party, he did not
conceive that they pretended to any difcoveries.
They did not affect to be better Whigs, than thofe
were who lived in the days in which principle was
put to the teft. Some of the Whigs of thofe days
were then living. They were what the Whigs had
been at 'the Revolution j what they had been during
the reign of queen Anne ; what they had been at
the accefllon of the prefent royal family.

What they were at thofe periods is to be feen. It
rarely happens to a party to have the opportunity of a

clear,

( 55 )

clear, authentic, recorded, declaration of their poli-
tical tenets upon the fubject of a great conftitutional
event like that of the Revolution. The Whigs had
that opportunity, or, to fpeak more properly, they
made it. The impeachment of Dr. Sacheverel
was undertaken by a Whig Miniflry and a Whig
Houfe of Commons, and carried on before a preva-
lent and fteady majority of Whig Peers. It was
carried on for the exprefs purpole of ftating the true
grounds and principles of the Revolution -, what the
Commons emphatically called their foundation. It
was carried on for the purpole of condemning the
principles on which the Revolution was firil op-
pofed, and afterwards calumniated, in order by a
juridical fentence of the higheft authority to con-
firm and fix Whig principles, as they had operated
both in the refiftance to King James, and in the
. Jubfequent fettlement ; and to fix them in the ex-
tent and with the limitations with which it was
meant they fliould be underftood by pofterity. The
minifters and managers for the Commons were per-
fons who had, many of them, an active fhare in
the Revolution. Mod of them had feen it at an
age capable of reflection. The grand event, and
all the diicuflions which led to it, and followed it,
were then alive in the memory and converfation of
all men. The managers for the Commons muft
be fuppofed to have fpoken on that fubject the pre-
valent ideas of the leading party in the Commons,
and of the Whig miniflry. Undoubtedly they fpoke
alfo their own private opinions ; and the private
opinions of luch men are not without weight. They
were not umbratiles dottores> men who had ftudied
a free conftitution only in its anatomy, and upon
dead fyftems. They knew it alive and in action.

In this proceeding, the Whig principles, as ap-
plied to the Revolution and fettlement, are to be
E 4 found,

found, or they are -to be found no where. I wifli
the Whig readers of this appeal firft to turn to Mr.
Burke's Reflections from p. 20 to p. 50 ; and then
to attend to the following extracts from the trial
of Dr. Sacheverel. After this, they will confider
two things; firft, whether the doctrine in Mr.
Burke's Reflections be confonant to that of the
Whigs of that period j and fecondly, whether they
choofe to abandon the principles which belong-
ed to the progenitors of fome of them, and to the
. predecefTors of them all, and to learn new principles
\ of Whiggifm, imported from France, and diiTemi-
nated in this country from diflenting pulpits, from
federation focieties, and from the pamphlets, which (as
containing the political creed of thofe fynods) are in-
duftrioufly circulated in all parts of the two king-
doms. This is their affair, and they will make their
option.

Thefe new Whigs hold, that the fovereignty,
whether exercifed by one or many, did not only ori-
ginate/re^ the people (a pofition not denied, nor
worth denying or afienting to) but that, in the
people the fame fovereignty constantly and unalien-
ably refides ; that the people may lawfully depofe
kings, not only for mifconduct, but without any mif-
conduct at all ; that they may fet up any new fafhion
of government for themfelves, or continue without
any government at their pleafure ; that the people
are eflentially their own rule, and their will the
meafure of their conduct ; that the tenure of ma-
giftracy is not a proper fubject of contract; becaufe
magiftrates have duties, but no rights : and that if
a contract de faffo is made with them in one age,
allowing that it binds at all, it only binds thofe who
were immediately concerned in it, but does not pafs
to pofterity. Thefe doctrines concerning the people
(a term which they are far from accurately defining,
but by which, from many circumftances, it is plain

enough

( 57 )

I enough they mean their own faction, if they fhould
\grow by early arming, by treachery, or violence,
into the prevailing force) tend, in my opinion, to
the utter fubverfion, not only of all government,
in all modes, and to all ftable fecurities to rational
freedom, but to all the rules and principles of
morality itfelf.

k I arTert, that the ancient Whigs held doctrines,
totally different from thole I have laft mentioned. I
aflert, that the foundations laid down by the Com-
mons, on the trial of Doctor Sacheverel, for jufti-
fying the revolution of 1688, are the very fame
laid down in Mr. Burke's Reflections ; that is to
fay, —a breach of the original contraft, implied and
exprefled in the conftitution of this country, as
a fcherne of government fundamentally and invio-
lably fixed in King, Lords, and Commons. — That
the fundamental fubverfion of this antient conftitu-
tion, by one of its parts, having been attempted,
and in effect accomplifhed, juftified the Revolu-
tion. That it was juftified only upon the neceffity
of the cafe; as the only means left for the reco-
very of that antient conftitution, formed by the ori-
ginal contract of the Britifh ftate ; as well as for the
future prefervation of the fame government. Thefe
are the points to be proved.

A general opening to the charge againft Dr. Sache-
verel was made by the Attorney General, Sir John
Montagu; but as there is nothing in that opening
fpeech which tends very accurately to fettle the prin-
ciple upon which the Whigs proceeded in the pro-
fecution (the plan of the ipeech not requiring it)
I proceed to that of Mr. Lechmere, the manager
who fpoke next after him. The following are ex-
tracts, given, not in the exact order in which they
ftand in the printed trial, but in that which is
thought moft fit to bring the ideas of the Whig
Commons diftinctly under our view.

i MR.

( 58 )

* MR. LECHMERE.

c It becomes an indifpenfable duty upon us, who
appear in the name and on the behalf of all the
Commons of Great Britain, not onlj to demand
your lordfhips juftice on fuch a criminal [Dr. Sa-r
cheverel] but dearly and openly to ajfert our foun-
dat ions' — — —

< The nature of our conflitution is that of a //-
m*te£l monarchy ; wherein the fupreme power is
communicated and divided between Queen, Lords,
anc* Commons ; though the executive power and
adminiftration be wholly in the crown. The terms
Of fucfa a conftitution do not only ftippofe, but ex-

r . . 01,

prefs, an original contract between the crown and
fac people : by which that fupreme power was

r r » / r r .

(by mutual conient, and not by accident) limited,
an^ lodged in more hands than one. And the
uniform frefervation of fuch a conftitution for Jo.
many a?es* without any fundamental cLatt?e, demon-

/, 71/7-7 • r 7 /•

jtratcs to your Icrajhips the continuance of the Jame
contraft.' — — —

' The conlequences of fuch a frame of govern-
ment are obvious. That the laws are the rule to

..... r

both ; the common meaiure of the power or the
crown, and of the obedience of the fubjecl ; and
if the executive part endeavours fac.Jubvcrjion and
tota^ deftruttion of the government l, the original con-
tract is thereby broke, and the right of allegiance
ceafes ; that part of the government, thus funda-
mentally injured, hath a right to fave or recover
that conftitution, in which it had an original in-

s The necejfary means (which is the phrafe ufed
f by the Commons in their firft article) are words

State Trials, vol. v. p. 651.

made

( 59 )

' made choice of by them with the greatefl caution.
c Thofe means are defcribed (in the preamble to

4 their charge) to be, that glorious enterprize, which
? his late majefly undertook, with an armed force,
f to deliver this kingdom from popery and arbitrary
' power ; the concurrence of many fubjeclis of the
( realm, who came over with him in that enterprize,
c and of many others of all ranks and orders, who
' appeared in arms in many parts of the kingdom

5 in aid of that enterprize.

c Thefe were the means that brought about the
c Revolution ; and which the act that pafTed foon
s after, declaring the rights and liberties of the fubjeff,
c and fettling the JucceJJion of the crown, intends,
f when his late majefty is therein called the glorious
f inftrument of delivering the kingdom ; and which the
f Commons, in the laft part of their firft article,

* exprefs by the word rejiftance.

f But the Commons, who will never be unmind- Regard of
c ful of the allegiance of the fubiects to the crown of the Com"

... . • j j • i • i i • i mons to

f this realm, judged it highly incumbent upon their aiie-

* them, out of regard to thefafety of her majefty' s f^"^0,,
c perfon and government, and the antient and legal a d to the*

< conftitution of this kingdom, to call that refiftance *"[.£,,_
' the necejfary means; thereby plainly founding that tion.

* power, right, and refiftance, which was exercifed
' by the people at the time of the happy Revolu-
f tion, and which the duties of felf-prefervation and
( religion called them to, upon the NECESSITY
' of the cafe, and at the fame time effectually fe curing

< her majefty' s government, and the due allegiance of
aUberfabjeSs.' — — —

* The nature of fuch an original contratt of go«- AH ages
vernment proves, that there is not only a power I^e'inte.
in the people, who have inherited this freedom, to reft in p«-
aflert their own title to it ; but they are bound in £7S?^
duty to tranfmit the fame conftitution to their pof- tiadl> and
terity alfo.'

Mr.

Mr. Lechmere made a fecond fpeech. Notwith-
ftanding the clear and fatisfactory manner in which
he delivered himfelf in his firfl upon this arduous
queftion, he thinks himfelf bound again difti nelly to
affert the fame foundation j and to juftify the Re-
volution on the cafe of ' necejjity only, upon principles
perfectly coinciding with thofe laid down in Mr.
Burke's Letter on the French affairs.

MR. LECHMERE.

c Your lordfhips were acquainted, in opening the
charge, with how great caution, and with what un-
feigned regard to her majefly and her govern-
ment, and the duty and allegiance of her fub-
jects, the commons made ufe of the words ne-
ceflary means., to exprefs the refiftance that was
made ufe of to bring about the Revolution, and
with the condemning of which the Doctor is
charged by this article; not doubting but that the
honour and juftice of that refiftance, from the ne-
cejjity of that cafe, and to which alom we have fir iff ly
confined eur/ehes, when duly confidered, would
confirm and ftrengthen j-, and be underitocd to be
an effectual fecurity for an allegiance of the
fubject to the crown of this realm, in every other
cafe where there is not the fame necejjity ; and that
the right of the people to Jelf-defence, and pre-
fer-vation of their liberties, by ref flame, as their
loft remedy, is the rejult of a cafe of Juch neceflity
only, and by which the original contract between
king and people, is broke. I'bis was the •principle
laid down and carried through all that was J aid with
rejpeft to allegiance ; and on which foundation, in
the name and on the behalf of all the commons of

1 Great

( 61 )

Great Britain, we ajfert and juftify that refiftance by
which the late happy revolution was brought
about' — — —

f It appears to your lordfhips and the world, that
breaking the original contrail between king and people y
were the words made choice of by that Houfe of
Commons, [the Houfe of Commons which had
originated the declaration of right,] with the
greateft deliberation and judgment, and approved of
by your lordfhips, in that firft and fundamental
ftep towards the re-eftablifoment of the government,
which had received ib great a fhock from the evil
counfels which had been given to that unfortunate
prince.'

Sir John Hawles, another of the managers, fol-
lows the fteps of his brethren, pofitively affirming
the doctrine of non-reliftance to government to be
the general, moral, religious, and political rule for
the fubject; and juflifying the Revolution on the
fame principle with Mr. Burke, that is, as an ex-
ception from neceffity. — Indeed he carries the doctrine
on the general idea of non-refiftance much further
than Mr. Burke has done; and full as far as it can
perhaps be fupported by any duty ofperfeft obliga-
tion j however noble and heroic it may be, in many
cafes, to fuffer death rather than difturb the tran-
quillity of our country.

* SIR JOHN HAWLES.

c Certainly it muft be granted, that the doctrine
f that commands obedience to the fupreme power,
c though in things contrary to nature, even to fuffer
* death, which is the higheft injuftice that can be

* P. 676.

* done

' done a man, rather than make an oppofition to the5
' fupreme power * [is reafonablej] becaufe the
c death of one, or fome few private perfons, is a
( lefs evil than difturbing the whole government ; that
c law muft needs be underftood to forbid the doing
' or faying any thing to difturb the government ;
c the rather becaufe the obeying that law cannot
c be pretended to be againft nature : and the Doc-
' tor's refufing to obey that implicit law, is the
c reafon for which he is now profecuted; though he
c would have it believed, that the reafon he is now
c profecuted, was for the doctrine he aflerted of
f obedience to the fupreme power > which he
' might have preached as long as he had pleafed,
' and the Commons would have taken no offence
c at it, if he had flopped there, and not have taken
* upon him, on that pretence or occafion, to have
c caft odious colours upon the Revolution.'

General Stanhope was among the managers:
He begins his fpeech by a reference to the opinion
of his fellow managers, which he hoped had put
beyond all doubt the limits and qualifications that
the Commons had placed to their doctrines con-
cerning the Revolution; yet not fatisfied with this
general reference, after condemning the principle
of non-refiftance, which is aflerted in the fennon
without any exception, and ftating, that under the fpe-
cious pretence of preaching a peaceable doctrine,
Sacheverel and the Jacobites meant in reality to
excite a rebellion in favour of the Pretender, he
explicitly limits his ideas of refiftance with the

* The words neceflary to the completion of the fentence
are wanted in the printed trial — but the conftru&ion of the
Sentence, as well as tl.e foregoing part of the fpeech, juiHfy the
infertion of fome fuch fupplemental words as the above.

boundaries

boundaries laid down by his colleagues and by
Mr. Burke.

GENERAL STANHOPE.

f The conftitution of England is founded upon
c compatt ; and the fubjeils of this kingdom have, R; hts of
c in their feveral public and private capacities, as the fubje
' legal a title to what are their rights by law, as a JrownV
f prince to the poffefiion of his crown. q»*iiy le-

f Your lordfhips, and mod that hear me, are wit- gal"
f nefies, and muft remember the neceffities of thofe
f times which brought about the Revolution : that jufticeof
f no other remedy was left to preferve our religion Jo£niS
c and liberties ; that refiftance was neceffary and con- neceffity.
{ Jeqttently juft. — —

* Had the Doctor, in the remaining part of his
f fermon, preached up peace, quietnefs, and the
f like, and fhewn how happy we are under her
f maj city's adminiftration, and exhorted obedience
c to it, he had never been called to anfwer a
f charge at your lordfhips bar. But the tenor of all
4 his fubfequent difcourfe is one continued invective
c againft the government.'

Mr. Walpole (afterwards Sir Robert) was one
of the managers on this occafion. He was an
honourable man and a found Whig. He was not,
as the Jacobites and difcontented Whigs of his time
have reprefented him, and as ill-informed people flill
reprelent him, a prodigal and corrupt miniiter. They
charged him in their libels and feditious converfa-
tions as having firft reduced corruption to a fyftem.
Such was their cant. But he was far from governing
by corruption. He governed by party attachments.
The charge of fyftematic corruption is lefs appli-
cable to him, perhaps, than to any minifler who
ever ferved -the crown for fo great a length of

time.

( 64 )

time. He gained over very few from the Oppo-
fition. Without being a genius of the firft clafs,
he was an intelligent, prudent, and fafe minifteK.
He loved peace -, and he helped to commu-
nicate the fame difpofition to nations at leaft
as warlike and reftlefs as that in which he had
the chief direction of affairs. Though he ferved
a matter who was fond of martial fame, he kept
all the eftablifhments very low. The land tax
continued at two fhillings in the pound for the
greater part of his adminiftration. The other
impofitions were moderate. The profound re-
pofe, the equal liberty, the firm protection of
juft laws during the long period of his power,
were the principal caufes of that profperity which
afterwards took fuch rapid ftrides towards per-
fection; and which furniihed to this nation abi-
lity to acquire the military glory which it has fince
obtained, as well as to bear the burthens, the caufe
and confequence of that warlike reputation. With
many virtues, public and private, he had his faults ;
but his faults were fuperficial. A carelefs, coarfe,
and over familiar ftyle of difcourfe, without fufficient
regard to perfons or occafions, and an almoft total
want of political decorum, were the errours by
which he was moil hurt in the public opinion:
and thofe through which his enemies obtained the
greateft advantage over him. But juflice muft
be done. The prudence, fteadinefs, and vigilance
of that man, joined to the greateft poflible lenity in
his character and his politics, preferved the crown
to this royai family ; and with it, their laws and li-
berties to this country. Walpoie had no other
plan of defence for the Revolution, than that of
the othtr managers, and of Mr. Burke j and he
gives full a* little countenance to any arbitrary at-
tempts, , n the pait of reftlefs and factious men,
for framing new governments according to their
fancies.

MR.

t 65 )

MR. WALPOLE.

? Refiftance is no where enafted to be legal, but Cafe of
fubjefted, by all the laws now in being, to the "ufj of"the
greateft penalties. It is what is not, cannot, nor iaw;*»d

• 1 t J /- M j «« i • the higlieft

ought ever to be defcnbed, or affirmed, in any oOneL
pofitive law, to be excu fable : when> and upon
what nevtr-to-bt-expffftd occafions, it may be
exercifed, no man can forefeej and it ought never to
he thought of, but when an utter fubverfion of the
laws of the realm threatens the whole frame of our
conftitution, and no redrefs can other-wife be hoped for.
It therefore does, and ought for ever, to ftand,
in the eye and letter of the law, as the highejl
offence. But becaufe any man. or party of men,
may not^ out of folly or wantonnefs, commit
treafon, or make their own difcontents, ill prin-
ciples, or difguifed affections to another intereft,
a pretence to refift the fupreme power, will it fol- utmoft
low from thence that the utmoft neceffity ought JSSte
not to engage a nation, in its own defence, for
the prefervation of fly e whole T

Sir Jofeph Jekyl was, as I have always heard and
believed, as nearly as any individual could be, the
very ftandard of Whig principles in his age. He
was a learned, and an able man ; full of honour,
integrity, and public fpirit; no lover of innovation;
nor difpofed to change his Iblid principles for
the giddy fafhion of the hour. Let us hear this
Whig.

SIR JOSEPH JEKYL.

* In clearing up and vindicating the juftice of the

* Revolution, which was the fecond thing propofel, it

F < is

( 66 )

Commons < is far from the intent of the Commons to ftate the
?heTm£te c I*m**s and bounds of the fnbject's fubmiflion to the
of fubmif- « fovereign. That which the law hath been wifely
c filent in, the Commons defire to be filent in too ;
c nor will they put any cafe of a juftifiable refiftance,
' but that of the Revolution only; and they perfuade
f themjehcs that the doing right to that refiftance will
( be Jo far from promoting popular licence or confufion-,
' that it ivill have a contrary effeft> and be a means of
'fettling men's winds in the love of, and veneration for
' the laws -t to refcue and fecure which, was the
c ONLY aim and intention of thofe concerned in re-
•'Jijlance.'

lion.

To feciirfe
the laws,
the only
aim of the
Revolu-
tion.

Dr. Sacheverel's counfel defended him on this
principle, namely — that whilft he enforced from the
pulpit the general doctrine of non-refiftance, he was
not obliged to take notice of the theoretic limits
which ought to modify that doctrine. Sir
Jofeph Jekyl, in his reply, whilft he controverts its
application to the Doctor's defence, fully admits
and even enforces the principle itfelf, and fupports
the Revolution of 1 68 8, as he and all the managers
had done before, exactly upon the fame grounds
on which Mr. Burke has built, in his Reflections
on the French Revolution.

SIR JOSEPH JEKYL.

c If the Doctor had pretended to have ftated the
particular bounds and limits of non-refiftance,
and told the people in what cafes they might, or
might not refift, be would have been much to blame ;
nor was one word faid in the articles, or by the
managers, as if that was expected from him:
but, on the contrary > we have infifted, that in NO

* tare

i

afe can refinance b? lawful, but in cafe of extreme
neceffity, and where the conftitution cannot ether- neceflity.
f wife be preferred; and fuch neceffity ought to be
c plain and obvious to the fenfe and judgment of
( the whole nation > and this was the cafe at the Re-
' volution.'

The counfel for Doctor Sacheverel, in defend-
ing their client, were driven in reality to abandon
the fundamental principles of his doctrine, and to
confefs, that an exception to the general doctrine
of paffive obedience and non-refiftance did exift
in the cafe of the Revolution. This the ma-
nagers for the Commons confidered as having
gained their caufe ; as their having obtained the
•whole of what they contended for. They con-
gratulated themfelves and the nation on a civil
victory, as glorious and as honourable as any that
had obtained in arms during that reign of tri-
umphs.

Sir Jofeph Jekyl, in his reply to Harcourt, and
the other great men who conducted the cauie for
the Tory fide, fpoke in the following memorable
terms, diftinctly Hating the whole of what the Whig
Houfe of Commons contended for, in the name
of all their constituents : — *

SIR JOSEPH JEKYJ.

c My lords, the concefiions [the conceffions of Ne
Sacheverel's counfel] are thde: — That, neceffity ^""^JJ
creates an exception to the general rule of /ubmif- and the/
fion to the prince j — that fuch exception is under- f JJ'JJI ^on
ftood or implied in the laws that require fudi nec«r«jr,
iubmiffionj— and that the cafe of the Revolution ^e™?'
wa: a cafe of ncceflity. th« demand

^^ , TM r

F 2 * Thefe

( 68 )

1 Thefe arc conccfllons Jo ample, and do fo fully
anfwer the drift of the Commons in this article,
and are to the utmoft extent of their meaning in it,
that I can't forbear congratulating them upon
this fuccefs of their impeachment ; that in full
parliament, this erroneous doctrine of unlimited
non-refiftance is given up, and difclaimed. And
may it not, in after ages, be an addition to the
glories of this bright reign, that fo many of thofe
who are honoured with being in her majefty's
fervice have been at your lordlhips bar, thus fuc-
cefsfully contending for the national rights of her
people, and proving they are not precarious or
remedilefs ?

* But to return to thefe conceflions j I muft ap-
peal to your lordlhips, whether they are not a
total departure from the Doctor's anfwer.'

I now proceed to fhew that the Whig managers
for the Commons meant to preferve the government
on a firm foundation, by aflerting the perpetual vali-
dity of the fettlement then made, and its coercive
power upon pofterity. I mean to fhew that they
gave no fort of countenance to any doctrine tending
, to imprefs the people, taken feparately from the legif-
lature which includes the crown, with an idea that
they had acquired a moral or civil competence to alter
(without breach of the original compact on the part
of the king) the fuccefiion to the crown, at their
pleafure; much lefs that they had acquired any
right, in the cafe of fuch an event as caufed the
Revolution, to fet up any new form of govern-
ment. The author of the Reflections, I believe,
thought that no man of common understanding
could oppofe to this doctrine, the ordinary fove-
reign power* a"s declared in the act of queen Anne.
That is j that the kings or queens of the realm,

with

with the confent of parliament, are competent to
regulate and to fettle the fuccefiion of the crown.
This power is and ever was inherent in the fupreme
fovereignty ; and was not, as the political divines
vainly talk, acquired by the revolution. It is de-
clared in the old ftatute of Queen Elizabeth. Such
a power muft refide in the complete fovereignty of
every kingdom $ and it is in fact exercifed in all of
them. But this right of competence in the legiflature,
not in the people, is by the legiflature itfelf to be exer-
cifed \v\t\\found difcretion ; that is Ito fay, it is to be
exercifed or not, in conformity to the fundamental
principles of this government ; to the rules of moral
obligation ; and to the faith of pacts, either con-
tained in the nature of the tranfaction, or entered
into by the body corporate of the kingdom j which
body, in juridical construction, never dies; and in fact
never loies its members at once by death.

Whether this cfoctnne is reconcileable to the
modern philofophy of government, J believe the
author neither knows nor cares ; as he has little
refpect for any of that fort of philofophy. This
may be becaufe his capacity and knowledge do
not reach to it. If fuch be the cafe, he cannot be
blamed, if he acts on the fenfe of that incapacity ;
he cannot be blamed, if in the moil arduous and
critical queftions which can poflibly arife, and which
affect to the quick the vital parts of our conftitu-
tion, he takes the fide which leans moft to fafety and
fettlement $ that he is refolved not " to be wife
" beyond what is v-ritten" in the legiflative recor4
and practice j that when doubts arife on them, he
endeavours to interpret one ftatute by another j and
to reconcile them all to eftablifhed recognized
morals, and to the general antient known policy
of the laws of England. Two things are equally
Evident, the firft j$, that the legiflature polMes the
F 3 power

( 70 )

power of regulating the fucceflion of the crown;
the fecond, that in the exercife of that right it has
uniformly acted as if under the reftraints which the
author has ftated. That author makes what the
antients call mos majorum, not indeed his fole, but
certainly his principal rule cf policy, to guide his
judgment in whatever regards our laws. Unifor-
mity and ?.:;:ilogy can b>" pjcfeived in them by
this procefs only. That point bang fixed, and
laying fafl. Iv-'.l of a flrong bottom, our fpecula-
tions may fwir.gin all directions, without public de-
triment; becaufe they will ride with fure anchorage.

In this manner thefe things have been always
confidered by our anceftors. There are fome in-
deed who have the art cf turning the very acts of
parliament which were made for fecuring the here-
ditary fucceffbn in the prefent royal family by ren-
dering it penal to doubt of the validity of thofe
acts of parliament, into an inftrument for defeating
all their ends and purpofes : but upon grounds
fo very foolifH, that it is not worth while to take
further notice of fuch fophiftry.

To prevent any unneceflaiy fubdivifion, I ihall
here put together what may be neceflary to fhew the
perfect agreement of the Whigs with Mr. Burke,
in his affertions, that the Revolution made no
" eflential change in the conftitution of the mo-
" narchy, or in any of its ancient, found, and
" legal principles; that the fucceflion was fettled
<f in the Hanover family, upon the idea, and in the
" mode of an hereditary fucceflion qualified with
" Proteftantifm ; that it was not fettled upon ekftive
" principles, in any fenfe of the word efeftive, or
" under any modification or defcription of election
" whatfoever i but, on the contrary, that the nation,
" after the Revolution, renewed by a frefh compact
" the fpiiit of 'the original compact of the ftate,

" binding

( 71 )

Cf binding itfelf, both in its exifting members and all Its
" pofterity, to adhere to the fettlement of an here-
" ditary fucceffion in the Proteftant line, drawn
" from James the Firft, as the ftock of inheritance."

SIR JOHN HAWLES.

c If he [Dr. Sacheverel] is of the opinion he pre- Necefiity of
f tends, I cannot imagine how it comes to pafs, that Jj ^'ght
f he that pays that deference to the fupreme power of the
c has preached fo directly contrary to the determina- Jubmuf™ J
' tions of the fupreme power in this governments he to the r«-
' very well knowing that the lawfulnels of the Revo- tlemcnt
' lution, and of the means whereby it was brought
c about, has already been determined by the aforefaid

* acts of parliament : and do it in the worft manner he
' could invent. For queftioning the right to the crown
c here in England, has procured the Jhedding of more
c blood, and caufed more Jlaughter, than all the other
' matters tending to difturbances in the government, put
' together. If, therefore, the doctrine which the
e apoftles had laid down, was only to continue the

* peace of the world, as thinking the death of foine

* few particular perfons better to be borne with
f than a civil war ; fure it is the higheft breach of
1 that law to queftion the firft principles of this
' government.'

' If the Doctor had been contented with the liberty

* he took of preaching up the duty of paffive obedi-
' ence, in the moft extenfive manner he had thought

* fit, and would have flopped there, your lordfhips
' would not have ha.d the trouble, in relation to
' him, that you now have; but it is plain, that he
' preached up his abfolute and unconditional obe-
f djence, not to continue the -peace and tranquillity of
' this nation, but to Jet thejubjefts atjtrifey and to ratfe

* a war in the bowels of this nation \ and it is for this
f that he is now profecuted ; though he would fain
' have it believed that the profecution was for

F 4 < preaching

( 7* )

f preaching the peaceable doctrine of abfolute obe-
* dience.'

Whole
frame of
goi-ernmer,t
reftoredui -
hurt on the
Revolution.

SIR JOSEPH JEKYL.

* The whole tenor of the adminiftration, then in
being, was agreed by all to be a total departure
from tbe conftitution. The nation was at that time
united in that opinion, all but the criminal part
of it. And as the nation joined in the judgment
of their difeafe, fo they did in the remedy, they
Jaw there was no remedy left, but the laft ; and when
that remedy took place, the whole frame of. the go-
vernment ivas reftored entire and unhurt *• This
fhewed the excellent temper the nation was in at
that time, that, after fuch provocations from an
abufe of the regal power, and fuch a convulfion,
no one fart of the conftitution was altered, orjuffer-
ed the leaft damage \ but, on the contrary ', the whole
received new life and 'vigour.'

The Tory council for Dr. Sacheverel having
infmuated, that a great and effential alteration in
the conftitution had been wrought by the Revolu-
tion, Sir Joieph Jekyl is fo ftrong on this point,

* * What we did was, in truth and fubftance and in a conflitu-

* tional light, a revolution, hot made, 'but prevented. We took
' folid fecurities; we fettled doubtful queftions; we correfled ano-
« malies in our Jaw. In the liable fundamental parts of our con-

* ftitution we made no revolution ; rio, nor any alteration at all.
' We did not impair the monarchy. Perhaps it might be Ihewn
' that we ftrengthened it very confiderably. The nation kept the
' fame ranks, the fame orders, the fame privileges, the fame fran-

* chifes, the fame rules for property, the fame fubordinations,the
« fame order iri the law, in the revenue, and in the magiftracy ;
' the fame lords, the fame commons, the fame corporations, the
' fame electors.' Mr. Burke's fpeech in the Hcttfe of Commons f
$tb February 1 790. Jt appears how exa&ly he coincides in every
thing with Sir jofeph Jekyl,

that

( 73 )

£hat he takes fire even at the infinuation of his
being of fuch an opinion.

SIR JOSEPH JEKYU

* If the Doctor inftructed his counfel to infinu- K
ate that there was any innovation in the conftitution J
wrought by the Revolution, it is an addition to his
crime. The Revolution did not introduce any inno-
vation ; it was a reftoration of the antient funda-
mental conftitution of the kingdom, and giving it its
proper force and energy.'

***##*#•#**

The Solicitor General, Sir Robert Eyre, dif-
tinguilhes exprefsly the cafe of the Revolution, and
ics principles, from a proceeding at pleafure, on the
part of the people, to change their antient confti-
tution, and to frame a new government for them-
felves. He diftinguifiies it with the fame care from
the principles of regicide, and republicanifm, and
the forts of refiftance condemned by the doctrines
of the church of England, and, which ought to be
condemned, by the doctrines of all churches pro-
fefling Chriftianity.

MR. SOLICITOR GENERAL^ SIR ROBERT EYRE.

' The refiftance at the Revolution, which was Revolution
5 founded in unavoidable ne-ce/ity, could be no de- J'Xfo'T

* fence to a man that was attacked for ajjerting voluntary
5 that the people might cancel their allegiance at plea- Segiaw*
f Jure, or dethrone- and murder their Jovereign by a

f- judiciary Jentence. For it can never be inferred

* from the lawfulness of refiftance, at a time when
' a total fubverficn of the government both in church
'. and ft ate was intended, that a people may take
'• up arms, and call their Jovereign to account at
' pleafure ; and, therefore, fmce the Revolution could

* le ofnofervice in giving the leaft colour for averting

( any

( 74 )

c any fuch wicked principle, the Doctor could never
' intend to put it into the mouths of thofe new
' preachers, and new politicians, for a defence ;
' unlefs it be his opinion, that the refiftance at the

* R volution can bear any parallel with the execra-
c bis m:>.rddr cf the royal martyr, jo iujJly detefledby the

' It is plain that the Doctor is not impeached
c for preaching a. general doctrine, and enforcing

* L,e general duty of obedience, but for preaching

* againft an excepted cafe, after he has flat ed the ex-
f cepfion. He is not impeached for preaching the

* genera] doctrine of obedience, and the utter ille-
f gality of refiftance upon any pretence whatfoever ;
c but becaufe, having firft laid down the general
' doctrine as true, without any exception, he flatss
' the excepted cafe, the Revolution, in exprefs terms,
' as an objection ; and then afTuming the confide-
' ration of that excepted cafe, denies there was any
c refiftance in the Revolud: n ; and afferts, that to
' impute refiftance to the Revolution, would caft
' black and odious colours upon it. This is not

* preaching the doctrine of non-re fiftance, in the
' general terms ufed by the homilies, and the fa-

* thers of the church where cafes of neceflity may
' be underftcod to be excepted by a tacit implication, as
' the counjel have allowed-, but is preaching directly
' againft the refiftance at the Revolution, which, in

* the courfe of this debate, has been all along ad-
c mitted to be neceffary and juft, and can have
' no other meaning than to bring a dishonour

* upon the Revolution, and an odium upon thofe.
( great and illuftrious perfons, thofe friends to the
f monarchy and the church, that ajjifled in bringing it
( about. For had the Doclor intended any thing elfe,

* he would have treated the cafe of the Revolution
' in a different manner, and have given it the true
( and fair anfii-er j he would have faid, that the re-

< fiftance

( 7J )

« fiftance at the Revolution was cf abjolute neceffity, Revolution

, , , , r • i a • • on abfolutc

' and the only means left to revive the conjtitution j neceiruy.

' and muft therefore be taken as an executed cafe,

* and could never come within the reach and inten-

* tion of the general doctrine of the church.

' Your lord (hips take notice on what grounds the
c Doftor continues to affert the fame pofition in his
4 anfwer. But is it not moft evident, that the ge-.

* neral exhortations to be met with in the homilies
' of the church of England, and fuch like decla-
c rations in the ftatutes of the kingdom, are meant

* only as rules for the civil obedience of the fubjeft
4 to the legal adminiftration of the fupreme power in
4 ordinary cafes ? And it is equally abfurd, to con-

* ftrue any words in a pofitive law to authorize the

* deftruftion of the whole, as to expect that king,
4 lords, and commons fhould, in exprefs terms of
4 law, declare fuch an ultimate refort as the right of
4 refinance t at a time when the cafe fuppofes that the
f force of all law is ceajed *.

( The Commons muft always refent, with the ut- Commons
4 moil deteftation and abhorrence, every pofition aveMhlSj

* that may fhake the authority of that aft of par- thefubmif-
4 liament, whereby the crown is fettled upon her SritjftotM
4 majefty, and whereby the lords fpiritual and temporal fettiement
4 and commons do, in the name of. all the people of Eng- crolin.

4 land, moft humbly and faithfully Jubmit them/elves,
f their heirs and pofteritiss, to her majejiy, which this
4 general principle of abfolute non-refiftance muft
f certainly fhake.

c For, if the refiftance at the Revolution was ille-
e gal, the Revolution fettled in ufurpation, and this
4 aft can have no greater force and authority than
f an aft pafied under an ufurper.

4 And the Commons take leave to obierve, that
4 the authority of the parliamentary fettiement is a

* See Reflexions, p. 42, 43.

' matter

( 76 )

matter of the greateft confequence to maintain,, in
a cafe where the hereditary right to the crown is
contefted.

' It appears by the feveral inftances mentioned in
the act declaring the rights and liberties of the
fubject, and fettling the fuccefilon of the crown,
that at the time of the Revolution there was A
total ' fubverfion of the conftitution of government both
in church and ft ale, which is a cafe that the laws
cf England could ne^jerfuppoje^ provide for, or have
in view.*

Sir Jofeph Jekyl, fo often quoted, confidered the
prefervation of the monarchy, and of the rights and
prerogatives of the crown, as eiTential objects with
all found Whigs ; and that they were bound, not on-
ly to maintain them when injured or invaded, but to
exert themfelves as much for their re-eftabliftiment,
ifthey fhould happen to be overthrown by popular fu-
ry, as any of their own more immediate and popu-
lar rights and privileges, if the latter fhould be at
any time fubverted by the crown. For this reafon
he puts the cafes of the Revolution and the Reftora-
Kiony exactly upon the fame footing. He plainly
marks, that it was the object cf all honeft men,
not to facrifice one part of the conftitution to an-
other; and much more, not to facrifice any of them
to vifionary theories of the rights of man ; but to
preferve our whole inheritance in the conftitution,
in all its members and all its relations, entire, and
unimpaired, from generation to generation. In this
Mr. Burke exactly agrees with him.

SIR JOSEPH JEKYL.

iat 3re * Nothing is plainer than that the people have
riSht<jof ( a light to the laws and the conftitution. This

' right

( 77 )

right the nation hath afferted, and recovered out
of the hands of thofe who had difpoffefTed them
of it at feveral times. There are of this two
fainous inflames in the knowledge of the prefent
age ; I mean that of the Reftauration, and that ^f JJ
of the Revolution j in both of thefe great events union.
were the regal -power, and the rights of the people ^^
recovered. And it is bard to Jay in 'which the u-refti-i
people have the greatefl intereft:, for the commons ^f^
are Jenfible that there is not one legal power be- crown
longing to the crown, but they have an intereft in it ; own!'1*
and I doubt not but they will always be as careful
to fupport the rights of the crown, as their own
privileges .'

The other Whig managers regarded (as he did)
the overturning, of the monarchy by a republican
faclion with the very fame horror and deteftation
with which they regarded the deftruftion of the
privileges of the people by an arbitrary mo-
narch.

MR. LECHMERE,

Speaking of our conftitution, ftates it as c a
f conflitution which happily recovered itfelf,.at

* the Reftoration, from the confufions and dif-

* orders which the horrid and del eft able proceed-

* ings of faction and uj'urpation had thrown it into,
f and which, after many convulfions and ftruggles,

•was providentially faved at the late happy Revo-
1 lution ; and, by the many good laws parted fince

* that time, ftands now upon a firmer foundation :

* together with the moft comfortable profpect of
' fecurity to all pofterity, by the fettlement of the
£ crown in the Proteftant line.'

I mean

( 78 )

I mean now to Ihew that the Whigs, (if Sir
Jofeph Jekyl was one) and if he fpoke in conformity
to the fenfe of the Whig houfe of commons and
the Whig miniftry who employed him, did care-
fully guard againft any prefumption that might
arife from the repeal of the non-refitlance oath of
Charles the fecond, as if, at the Revolution, the an-
tient principles of our government were at all chang-
ed— or that republican doctrines were countenanced,
— or any fanftion given to feditious proceedings
upon general undefined ideas of mifconducl: — or for
changing the form of government — or for refiftance
upon any other ground than the mceffity fo often
mentioned for the purpofe of felf-prefervation. It
will {hew dill more clearly the equal care of the
then Whigs, to prevent either the regal power
from being fwallowed up on pretence of popular
rights, or the popular rights from being deftroyed
on pretence of regal prerogatives.

SIR JOSEPH JEKYL.

c Further, I defire it may be confidered, that
thefe legislators [the legiflators who framed the
non- refiftance oath of Charles the Second] were
guarding againft the confequences of thofe per-
nicious and antimonarcbical principles, which had
been broached a little before in this nation ; and thofe
large declarations in favour of non-rejiftame were
made to encounter or obviate the mifchief of
thofe principles ; as appears by the preamble to
the fulleft of thofe acts, which is the militia aft, in
the i jth and i4th of King Charles the Second.
The words of that act are thefe : And, during the
late ufurped governments, many evil find rebellious
principles have been wftilled into the minds of the
people of this kingdom, which may break forth, unlejs
prevented, to the difturb<yjcc of the peace and quiet

( thereof:

( 79 )

c thereof: Be it therefore enafted, &V. Plere your
f lordfhips may fee the reafon that inclined thofc
c legiflators to exprefs themfelves in fuch a manner
4 againft refiftance. They had Jem the regal rights
c fwallowed z'.p, under the pretence cf popular ones ; and

* it is no imputation on them that they did not then
c forefee a quite different cafe, as was that of the Re-
' volution j where, under the pretence of regal au-
c thority,a total fubveriion of the rights of the fubjeft
' was advanced, and in a manner effected. And this

* may ferve to fhew, that it was not the defign of
c thofe legiflators to condemn refiftance, in a cafe of

* abfohte necej/ity, for preferring the conftitution, when
c they were guarding againft principles which had fo
c lately deftroyed it.

c As to the truth of the do6lrine in this declara-
tion which was repealed, / will admit it to be as
true as the Doffor' s counjel ajftrt it; that is, with
an exception of cafes of neceffity ; and it was not re-
pealed becaufe it was falfe, underftanding it with
that reftrittion ; but it was repealed becaufe it
might be interpreted in an unconfinedjenje, and ex-
clufive of that reftriftion; and being fo underftood,
would refle6t on the juftice of the Revolution :
and this the legiflature had at heart, and were
very jealous of j and by this repeal of that decla-
ration, gave a parliamentary or legiflative admo-
nition, againft averting this doctrine of non-re-
fiftance in an unlimited fenfe.' — — —

c Though the general doftrine of non- refiftance, General
the doftrine of the church of England, as ftated
in her homilies, or elfewhere delivered, by which

the general duty of fubje&s to die higher powers JjJ
is taught, be owned to be, as unqueftionably it bound to*
is, a godly and wholefome doclrine-, though this *J
general doctrine has been conftantly inculcated by
the reverend fathers of the church, dead and
living, and preached by them as a prefervative
S < againft

againft the popifh doctrine of depofing prince"*;
and as the ordinary rule of obedience ; arid
though the fame doctrine has been preached,
maintained, and avowed by our moft orthoddx
and able divines from the time of the Reforma"-
tion j and how innocent a man Dr. Sacheverel
had been, if, with an bone/} and well-meant zeal,
he had preached the fame doctrine in the fame
general terms in which he found it delivered try
the apoftles of Chrift, as taught by the homilies,
and the reverend fathers of our church, and,
in imitation of thofe great examples, had only
prefied the general duty of obedience, and the il-
legality of refiftance, without taking notice 6f
any exception.'

SubmilTion
:o the fove-
; reign a con-
' Vieniious

uty, except
L.n cafes of
f^eceflity.

I
<

I'

Another of the managers for the houfe of com*
mons, Sir John Holland, was not lefs careful in
guarding againft a confufion of the principles of the
revolution, with any loofe general doctrines of a right
in the individual, or even in the people, to under-
take for themfelves, on any prevalent tempo-
rary opinions of convenience or improvement, any
fundamental change in the conftitution, or to
fabricate a new government for themfelves, and
thereby to difturb the public peace, and to unfettie
the antient conftitution of this kingdom.

SIR JOHN HOLLAND.

c The commons would not be underftood, as if
they were pleading for a licentious refiftance ; as if
JubjeRs were left to their good-will and pleafure,
when they are to obey, and when to rejift. No,
my lords, they know jhey are obliged by all the ties
of Jo rial creatures and Chriftiansy for wrath and

* confcience fake, to fulmit to their fovereign. The
( commons do not abet humourjome factious arms :
' they aver them to be rebellious. But yet they

* maintain, that that refiftance at the Revolution,

* which was fo neceffary, was lawful and juft from
< that neceffity.

c Thele general rujes of obedience may, upon a
c real neceffity -, admit a lawful exception ; and fuch a

* necejjary exception we aflert the revolution to be,

* 'Tis with th'i3 view of neceffity only, abfolute Right of

* neceffity of preferving our laws, liberties, and

* religion] 'tis with this limitation that we defire to u
' be underftood, when any of us fpeak of refiftance

€ in general. The neceffity of the refiftance at the
( Revolution, was at that time obvious to every
' man/

I fhall conclude thefe extra6b with a reference to
the prince of Orange's declaration, in which he gives
the nation the fulleft affurance that in his enterprize
he was far from the intention of introducing any
change whatever in the fundamental law and con-
ftitution of the ftate. He confidered the objecl: of
his enterprize, not to be a precedent for further
revolutions, but that it was the great end of his ex-
pedition to make fuch revolutions fo far as hu-
man power and wifdom could provide, unnecefla-

Extracts from the Prince of Orange's Declaration.

c All magiftrates, who have been unjuftly turn-
ed out, fhall forthwith refume their former em-
ployments, as well as all the boroughs of Eng-
land fhall return again to their antient frefcrip-
tions and charters : and more particularly, that

G *&f

the antlent charter of the great and famous ci-
ty of London fhall be again in force. And that
the writs for the members of parliament fhall
be addrefled to the proper officers, according to
law and cuftom. *— — —
' And for the doing of all other things, which the
two houfes of parliament fhall find necefTary for
the peace, honour, and fafety of the nation, fo that
there may be no danger of the nation's falling, at
any time hereafter, under arbitrary government'

Extra^ from the Prince of Orange's additional De-
claration.

e We are confident that no perfbns can \\xvtfuch
hard thoughts of us, as to imagine that we have
any other defign in this undertaking, than to pro-
cure a fettlementof the religion, and of the liberties
and properties oftheJubjecJs, upon Jo fur e a founda-
tion, that there may be no danger of the nation's re-
lapfmg into the like miferies at any time hereafter.
And, as the forces that we have brought along with
us are utterly diiproportioned to that wicked de-
fign of conquering the nation, if we were capable
of intending it ;Jo the great numbers of the principal
nobility and gentry, that are men of eminent quality
and eft at es, and perfons of known integrity and zeal,
both for the religion and government of England,
many of them aljo being diftingui/hed by their conflant
fidelity to the crown, who do both accompany us in
this expedition, and have earneftly folicited us
to it, will cover us from all fuch malicious infi-
nuations.'

In the fpirit, and upon one occafion in the
words *, of this declaration, the ftatutes paffed in
that reign made fuch provifions for preventing thefe
dangers, that fcarcely any thing fhort of combination

Declaration of Right.

of

of king, lords, and commons for the definition of
the liberties of the nation, can in any probability
make us liable to fimilar perils. In that dreadful,
and, I hope, not to be looked for cafe, any opinion
of a right to make revolutions, grounded on this pre-
cedent, would be but a poor refource. — Dreadful
indeed would be our fituation.

Thefe are the doctrines held by the Wings of
the Revolution, delivered with as much folemnity,
and as authentically at leaft, as any political dog-
jnas were ever promulgated from die beginning of
the world. If there be any difference between
their tenets and thofe of Mr. Burke it is, that the
old Whigs oppofe themfelves ftill more ftrongly
than he does againft the doctrines which are now
propagated with fo much induftry by thofe who
would be thought their fucceffors.

It will be faid perhaps, that the old Whigs, in
order to guard themfelves againft popular odium,
pretended to affert tenets contrary to thofe which
they fecretly held. This, if true, would prove, what
Mr. Burke has uniformly afferted, that the extrava-
gant doctrines which he meant to expofe, were dif~
agreeable to the body of the people ; who, though
they perfectly abhor a defpotic government, cer-
tainly approach more nearly to the love of mitigated
monarchy, than to any thing which bears the ap-
pearance even of the beft republic. But if thefe
old Whigs deceived the people, their conduct was
unaccountable indeed. They expofed their power,
as every one converfant in hiftory knows, to the
greateft peril, for the propagation of opinions which,
on this hypothecs, they did not hold. It is a
new kind of martyrdom. This fuppofition does
as little credit to their integrity as their wifdom:
It makes them at once hypocrites and fools. I
think of thofe great men very differently. I hold
them to have been, what the world thought them,
G 2 men

of deep imderftanding, open fmcerity, and
clear honour. However, be that matter as it may ;
what thefe old Whigs pretended to be, Mr. Burke
is. This is enough for him.

I do indeed admit, that though Mr. Burke has
proved that his opinions were thofe of the old
Whig party, folemnly declared by one houfe, in
effect and fubftance by both houfes of parliament,
this teftimony (landing by itfelf will form no proper
defence for his opinions, if he and the old Whigs
were both of them in the wrong. But it is his
prefent concern, not to vindicate thefe old Whigs,
but to fhew his agreement with them. — He appeals
to them as judges : he does not vindicate them as
culprits. It is current that thefe old politicians
knew little of the rights of men ; that they loft
their way by groping about in the dark, and fum-
bling among rotten parchments and mufty records.
Great lights they fay are lately obtained in the world ;
and Mr. Burke, inftead of ihrowding himfelf in ex-
ploded ignorance, ought to have taken advantage of
the blaze of illumination which has been fpread
about him. It may be fo. The enthufiafts of this
time, it feems, like their predeceffors in another
faction of fanaticifm, deal in lights. — Hudibras plea-
fantly fays of them, they

" Have lights, where better eyes are blind,
u As pigs are faid to fee the wind."

The author of the Reflections has heard a .great
deal concerning the modern lights j but he has
not yet had the good fortune to fee much of them.
He has read more than he can juftify to any
thing but the fpirit of curiofity, of the works of
thefe illuminators of the world. He has learn-
ed nothing from the far greater number of them,
than a full certainty of their fhallownefs, levity,
pride, petulance, prefumption and ignorance.

Where

Where the old authors whom he has read, and
the old men whom he has converfed with, have
left him in the dark, he is in the dark ftill. If
others, however, have obtained any of this extraor-
dinary light, they will ufe it to guide them in their
reft- arches and their conduct. I have only to with,
that the nation may be as happy and as profperous
under the influence of the new light, as it has been
in the fober fhade of the old obfcurity. As to
the reft, it will be difficult for the author of the Re-
flections to conform to the principles of the avowed
leaders of the party, until they appear otherwife than
negatively. All we can gather from them is this,
that their principles are diametrically oppofite to
his. This is all that we know from authority.
Their negative declaration obliges me to have re-
courfe to the books which contain pofitive doc-
trines. They are indeed, to thofe Mr. Burke holds,
diametrically oppofite ; and if it be true, (as the
oracles of the party have faid, I hope haftily) that
their opinions differ fo widely, it fhould feem they
are the moft likely to form the creed of the modern
Whigs.

I have ftated what were the avowed fentiments
of the old Whigs, not in the way of argu-
ment, but narratively. It is but fair to fet before
the reader, in the fame fimple manner, the fenti-
ments of the modern, to which they fpare neither
pains nor expence to make profelytes. I choofe
them from the books upon which moft of that in-
duftry and expenditure in circulation have been em-
ployed ; I choofe them not from thofe who fpeak
with a politic obfcurity ; not from thofe who only
controvert the opinions of the old Whigs, without
advancing any of their own, but from thofe who
fpeak plainly and affirmatively. The Whig reader
may make his choice between the two doctrines.

The doctrine then propagated by thefe focieties,

which gentlemen think they ought to be very

G 3 tender

( 86 )

tender in difcouraging, as nearly as poflible iit
their own words, is as follows: that in Greac
Britain we are not only without a good conftitu-
tion, but that we have " no conftitution." That,
" tho' it is much talked about, no fuch thing as a
" conftitution exifts, or ever did exift ; and confe-
" quently that the people have a conftitution yet: to
" form-, that fince William the Conqueror, the
" country has never yet regenerated irfelf, and is
" therefore without a conftitution. That where
" it cannot be produced in a vifible form, there is
<f none. That a conftitution is a thing antecedent
" to government ; and that the conftitution of a
<c country is not the aft of its government, but of
" a people conftituting a government. That every
" thing in the Englifh government is the reverie
" of what it ought to be, and what it is faid to be
" in England. That the right of war and peace
<£ refides in a metaphor {hewn at the Tower, for
* fix pence or a fhilling a-piece. — That it fig-
" nifies not where the right refides, whether in the
" crown or in parliament. War» is the common
<c harveft of thofe who participate in the divifion
" and expenditure of public money. That the
<c portion of liberty enjoyed in England is juft
" enough to enflave a country more productively
" than by defpotifm."

So far as to the general ftate of the Britifh confti-
tution.— As to our houfe of lords, the chief virtual
reprefentative of our ariftocracy, the great ground
and pillar of fecurity to the landed intereft, and that
main link by which it is connected with the law and
the crown, thefe worthy focieties are pleaied to tell
us, that, " whether we view ariftocracy before, or
:f behind, or fide- ways, or any way elfe, domeftically
" or publicly, it is (till a monfter. That ariftocracy
" in France had one feature lefs in its countenance
" than what it has in fome other countries •> it did

" not

" not compofe a body of hereditary legiflators. It:
<c was not a corporation of ariftocracy •" — for fuch
it feems that profound legiflator Mr. De la Fay-
ctte defcribes the houfe of peers. <c That it is
" kept up by family tyranny and injuftice — that
<c there is an unnatural unfitnefs in ariftocracy to be
" legiflators for a nation — that their ideas of dif-
" tributive juftice are corrupted at the very fource j
" they begin life by trampling on all their younger
Cf brothers, and fifters, and relations of every kind,
" and are taught and educated fo to do.— That the
" idea of an hereditary legiflator is as abfurd as an
(t hereditary mathematician. That a body holding
" themfelves unaccountable to any body, ought to
<c be trufted by no body — that it is continuing the
fc uncivilized principles of governments founded in
tf conqueft, and the bafe idea of man having apro-
<f perty in man, and governing him by a perfonal
<f right — that ariftocracy has a tendency to dege-
" nerate the human fpecies," &c. &c.

As to our law of primogeniture, which with few
and inconfiderable exceptions is the (landing law of
all our landed inheritance, and which without quef-
tion has a tendency, and I think a moft happy
tendency, to preferve a character of confequence,
weight, and prevalent influence over others in the
whole body of the landed intereft, they call loudly
for its deftrutljon. They do this for political rea-
fons that are very manifeft. They have the con-
fidence to fay, " that it is a law againft every law
" of nature, and nature herfelf calls for its deftruc-
" tion. Eftablifh family juftice, and ariftocracy
" falls. By the ariftocratical law of primogeni-
" turelhip, in a family of fix children, five are
" expofed. Ariftocracy has never but cm child.
" The reft are begotten to be devoured. They
" are thrown to the cannibal for prey, and the na-
" tural parent prepares the unnatural repaft."

64 As

As to the houfe of commons, they treat it far
worfe than the houfe of lords or the crown have
been ever treated. Perhaps they thought they had a
greater right to take this amicable freedom with
thofe of their own family. For many years it has
been the perpetual theme of their invectives. —
" Mockery, infult, ufurpation," are amongft the
beft names they beftow upon it. They damn it
in the mafs, by declaring " that it does not arife
*f out of the inherent rights of the people, as the
" national aflembly does in France, and whofe
" name defignates its original."

Of the charters and corporations, to whofe rights,
a few years ago, thefe gentlemen were fo trem-
blingly alive, they fay, " that when the people of
" England come to reflect upon them, they will,
c< like France, annihilate thofe badges of oppref-
" fion, thofe traces of a conquered nation."

As to our monarchy, they had formerly been
more tender of that branch of the conftitution, and
for a good realbn. The laws had guarded againfl
all feditious attacks upon it, with a greater degree
of ftriftnefs and feverity. The tone of thefe gen-
tlemen is totally altered fince the French Revolu-
tion. They now declaim as vehemently againft
the monarchy, as in former occafions they treacher-
oufly flattered and foothed it.

" When we furvey the wretched condition of
cc man under the monarchical and hereditary fyftems
Cf of government, dragged from his home by one
" power, or driven by another, and impoverifhed
" by taxes more than by enemies, it becomes evi-
" dent that thofe fyftems are bad, and that a ge-
" neral revolution in the principle and conftruction
" of governments is necefTary.

" What is government more than the manage -
5f ment of the affairs of a nation ? It is not, and
" from its nature cannot be, the property of any

" particular

" particular man or family, but of the whole com-
*e munity, at whole expence it is fupported ; and
" though by force or contrivance it has been ufurp-
" ed into an inheritance, the ufurpation cannot
" alter the right of things. Sovereignly, as a
" matter of right, appertains to the nation only,
fc and not to any individual j and a nation has at
<c all times an inherent indefeafible right to abolifh
" any form of government it finds inconvenient,
" and eftablifh fuch as accords with its interefl,
cc difpofition, and happinefs. The romantic and
" barbarous diftinttion of men into kings and fub-
'c jects, though it may fuit the condition of cour-
" tiers, cannot that of citizens ; and is exploded
fc by the principle upon which governments are
-" now founded. Every citizen is a member of
" the fovereignty, and, as fuch, can acknowledge
" no perfonal fubjection; and his obedience can be
f only to the laws."

Warmly recommending to us the example of
France, where they have deftroyed monarchy, they
fay —

" Monarchical fovereignty, the enemy of man-
" kind, and the fource of mifery, is abolifned ; and
<c fovereignty itfelf is reftored to its natural and
" original place, the nation. Were this the cafe
?' throughout Europe, the caufe of wars would be
?' taken away."

u But, after all, what is this metaphor called a
** crown, or rather what is monarchy ? Is it a thing,
" or is it a name, or is it a fraud ? Is it * a con-
" trivance of human wifdom,' or of human craft
" to obtain money from a nation under fpecious
" pretences ? Is it a thing nece0ary to a nation ?
?f If it is, in what does that neceffity confift, what
ff fervices does it perform, what is its bufmefs, and

" v/hat

( 9° )

*f what are its merits ? Doth the virtue confift m
" the metaphor, or in the man ? Doth the gold-
" fmith that makes the crown make the virtue al-
'* fo ? Doth it operate like Fortunatus's wifriing-
" cap, or Harlequin's wooden fword ? Doth it make
" a man a conjuror ? In fine, what is it ? It ap-
" pears to be a fomething going much out of
" fafhion, falling into ridicule, and rejected in fome
" countries both as unneceffary and expenfive. In
" America it is confidered as an abfurdity ; and in
" France it has fo far declined, that the goodnefs
" of the man, and the refpect for his perfonal cha-
" rafter, are the only things that preferve the ap-
" pearance of its exiftence."

" Mr. Burke talks about what he calls an here-
" ditary crown, as if it were fome production of
" Nature i or as if, like Time, it had a power to
tf operate, not only independently, but in fpite of
" man; or as if it were a thing or a fubjecT: uni-
" verfally confented to. Alas ! it has none of thole
" properties, but is the reverfe of them all. It is a
" thing in imagination, the propriety of which is
" more than doubted, and the legality of which
" in a few years will be denied."

" If I afk the farmer, the manufacturer, the
* merchant, the tradefman, and down through all
" the occupations of life to the common labourer,
" what fervice monarchy is to him ? he can give
" me no anfwer. If I alk him what monarchy is,
" he believes it is fomething like a fmecure.

" The French conftitution fays, That the right
" of war and peace is in the nation. Where elfe
" fhould it refide, but in thofe who are to pay the
" expence?

a In England, this right is faid to refide in a me-
3 " tapher.

( 9' )

* taphory fhewn at the Tower for fixpence or a

Cc fhilling a-piece : So are the lions ; and it would

tf be a ftep nearer to reafon to fay it refided in

K them, for any inanimate metaphor is no more

" than a hat or a cap. We can all fee the abfurdi-

<c ty of worfhipping Aaron's molten cal£ or Nebu-

" chadnezzar's golden image; but why do men

« continue to praftife themfelves the abfurdities they

ff defpife in others ?"

The Revolution and Hanover fucceffion had
been objects of the higheft veneration to the old
Whigs. They thought them not only proofs of
the ibber and fteady fpirit of liberty which guided
their anceftors ; but of their wifdom and provident
care of pofterity. — The modern Whigs have quite
other notions of thefe events and actions. They do
not deny that Mr. Burke has given truly the words
of the acts of parliament which fecured the fuc-
ceffion, and the juft fenfe of them. They attack not
him but the law.

" Mr. Burke (fay they) has done fome fervice,
" not to his caufe, but to his country, by bringing
<c thofe claufes into public view. They ferve to
" demonftrate how neceffary it is at all times to watch
" againft the attempted encroachment of power,
" and to prevent its running to excefs. Itisfome-
" what extraordinary, that the offence for which
" James II. was expelled, that of fctting up power
" by ajjumption, fhould be re-acted, under another
" lhape and form, by the parliament that expelled
ec him. It fhews that the rights of man were but
<e imperfectly underftood at the Revolution; for,
l( certain it is, that the right which that parliament
K fet up by cffumption (for by delegation it had it not,
" and could not have it, becaufe none could give it)
" over the perfons and freedom of pofterity for ever,
" was of the fame tyrannical unfounded kind which

" James

*' James attempted to fet up over the parliament

" and the nation, and for which he was expelled.

: The only difference is, (for in principle they dif-

" fer not), that the one was an ufurper over the

: living, and the other over the unborn -, and as

" the one has no better authority to ftand upon

" than the other, both of them muft be equally

" null and void, and of no effect."

" As the eftimation of all things is by comparifon,
" the Revolution of 1688, however from circum-
cc ftances it may have been exalted beyond its va-
" lue, will find its level. It is already on the wane ;
" eclipfed by the enlarging orb of reafon, and the
" luminous revolutions of America and France. In
<c lefs than another century, it will go, as well as
" Mr. Burke's labours, * to the family vault of all
fc the Capulets.' Mankind will then fcarcely beKevf
" that a country calling itfelf free, would fend to
<f Holland for a man, and clothe him with power, on
" purpoje to put tbemfehes in fear of him, and give
" him almoft a million fterlixg a -year for leave to
ff Jubmit tbewjehes and their fofterity, like bend-men
11 and bend-women, fcr ever "

" Mr. Burke having faid that the king holds his
" crown in contempt of the choice of the Revolu-
<c tion fociety, who individually or colleftively have
" not," (as moft certainly they have not) u a vote
" for a king amongft them, they take occafion from
c< thence to infer, that a king who does not hold
" his crown by election, defpifes the people."

<f The King of England," fays be, " holds bis
<f crown (for it does not belong to the nation,
" according to Mr. Burke) in contempt of the choice
" of the Revolution Society." &c.

" As to who is King in England or elfe where,

« or

( 93 )

'* or whether there is any King at all, or whether
*r the people chufe a Cherokee Chief, or a Heflian
" Huffar for a King, it is not a matter that I
" trouble myfelf about — be that to themfelves;
*< but with refpect to the doctrine, fo far as it re-
*f lates to the Rights of Men and Nations, it is
" as abominable as any thing ever uttered in the
" moft enflaved country under heaven. Whether
" it founds worfe to my ear, by not being accuf-
" tomed to hear fuch defpotifm, than what it does
ls to the ear of another perfon, I am not fo well
" a judge of; but of its abominable principle I
" am at no lofs to judge."

Thefe focieties of modern Whigs pufh their in-
folence as far as it can go. In order to prepare the
minds of the people for treafon and rebellion, they
reprefent the king as tainted with principles ofdef-
potifm, from the circumflance of his having domi
nions in Germany. In direct defiance of the moil
notorious truth, they defcribe his government there
to be a defpotifm i whereas it is a free conftitution,
in which the dates of the electorate have their
part in the government -, and this privilege has
never been infringed by the king, or, that I have
heard of, by any of his predeceffors. The confti-
tution of the electoral dominions has indeed a dou-
ble control, both from the laws of the empire, and
from the privileges of the country. Whatever rights
the king enjoys a.s elector, have been always pa-
rentally exercifed, and the calumnies of theft fcan-
dalous focieties have not been authorized by a fingle
.complaint of oppreffion.

" When Mr. Burke fays that f his majefty's
heirs and fuccefTors, each in their time and order,
v/ill come to the crown with the Jame contempt
of their choice with which his majefty has fuc-
ceeded to that he wears,' it is faying too much
even to the humbleft individual in the country ;
" part of Avhole daily labour goes towards making

"up

( 94 )

" up the million fterling a year, which the country
<f gives the perfon it ftiles a king. Government
" with infolence, is defpotifm j but when contempt
" is added, it becomes worfe j and to pay for con-
" tempt, is the excefs of flavery. This fpecies of
" government comes from Germany ; and re-
" minds me of what one of the Brunfwick foldiers
" told me, who was taken prilbner by the Ameri-
" cans in the late war: c Ah !' faid he, * America
' is a fine free countiy, it is worth the people's

* righting for ; I know the difference by knowing

* my own : in my country, if the prince fays> Eat
t ftraWy we eat ft raw.' " God help that country,
" thought I, be it England or elfe where, whole li-
" berties are to be protected by German principles
" of government, and princes of Brunfivick ! "

" It is fomewhat curious to obferve, that although
<c the people of England have been in the habit of
" talking about kings, it is always a Foreign Houfe
<f of kings ; hating Foreigners, yet governed by them.
" — It is now the Houfe of Brunfwick, one of the
" petty tribes of Germany." -----

" If Government be what Mr. Burke defcribes
" it, * a contrivance of human wifdom,' I might
" afk him, if wifdom was at fuch a low ebb in Eng-
" land, that it was become necefTary to import it
" from Holland and from Hanover ? But I will do
<£ the country the juftice to fay, that was not the
" cafe ; and even if it was, it miftook the cargo.
" The wifdom of every country, when properly ex-
*e erted, is fufficient for all its purpofes j and there
<( could exift no more real occafion in England to
** ba-ve Jent for a Dutch Stadtholder, or a Ger-
" man Eleftor, than there was in America to have
" done a fimilar thing. If a country does not un-
" derftand its own affairs, how is a foreigner to un-
" derftand them, who knows neither its laws, its

" manners,

( 95 )

" manners, nor its language? If there exifted a man

" fo tranfcendantly wife above all others, that his

" wifdom was neceffary to inftruft a nation, fome

*c reafon might be offered for monarchy ; but when

<c we caft our eyes about a country, and obferve

" how every part underftands its own affairs j and

" when we look around the world, and fee that of all

" men in it, the race of kings are the mofl infigni-

" ficant in capacity, our reafon cannot fail to afk us

« — What are thofe men kept for ?" *

Thefe are the notions which, under the idea of
Whig principles, feveral perfons, and among them
perfons of no mean mark, have afibciated them-
felves to propagate. I will not attempt in the
fmalleft degree to refute them. This will probably
be done (if fuch writings {hall be thought to deferve
any other than the refutation of criminal juftice) by
others, who may think with Mr. Burke. He has
performed his parr.

I do not wifh to enter very much at large into the
difcuflions which diverge and ramify in all ways from
this productive fubject. But there is one topic upon
which I hope I fhall be excufed in going a little be-
yond my defign. The factions, now io bufy amongft
us, in order to diveft men of all love for their country,
and to remove from their minds all duty with re-
gard to the ftate, endeavour to propagate an opini-
on, that the people, in forming their commonwealth,
have by no means parted with their power over it.
This is an impregnable citadel, to which thefe gen-
tlemen retreat whenever they are pufhed by the
battery of laws, and ufages, and pofitive conven-
tions. Indeed it is fuch and of fo great force,
that all they have done in defending their out-
works is fo much time and labour thrown away.
Difcufs any of their fchemes — their anfwer is — It

* Vindication of the Rights of Man, recommended by the
feveral focieties.

( 96 )

Is the act of the people, and that is fufficient. Are w£
to deny to a majority of the people the right of
altering even the whole frame of their fociety, if
fuch fhould be their pleafure ? They may change
it, fay they, from a monarchy to a republic to-day,
and to-morrow back again from a republic to a
monarchy ; and fo backward and forward as often
as they like. They are matters of the common-
wealth ; becaufe in fubftance they are themfelves
the commonwealth. The French revolution, fay
they, was the act of the majority of the people ;
and if the majority of any other people, the people of
England for inftance, wifh to make the fame change,
they have the fame right.

J uft the fame undoubtedly. That is, none at all.
Neither the few nor the many have a right to act
merely by their will, in any matter connected
with duty, truft, engagement, or obligation. The
conflitution of a country being once fettled upon
fome compact, tacit or exprefled, there is no
power exifting of force to alter it, without the
breach of the covenant, or the confent of all the
parties. Such is the nature of a contract. And
the votes of a majority of the people, whatever
their infamous flatterers may teach in order to
corrupt their minds, cannot alter the moral any
more than they can alter the phyfical eflence
of things. The people are not to be taught to
think lightly of their engagements to their go-
vernors; elfe they teach governors to think lightly
of their engagements towards them. In that kind
of game in the end the people are fure to be lofers.
To flatter them into a contempt of faith, truth, and
juftice, is to ruin them ; for in thefe virtues confifts
their whole fafety. To flatter any man, or any part
of mankind, in any defcription, by afferting, that in
engagements he or they are free whilft any other hu-
man creature is bound, is ultimately to veft the rule
of morality in, the pleafure of thofe who ought to be

rigidly

( 97 )

rigidly fubmitted to it ; to fubje<5t the fovereign rea-
fon of the world to the caprices of weak and giddy
men.

But, as no one of us men can difpenfe with public
or private faith, or with any other tie of moral ob-
ligation, fo neither can any number of us. The
number engaged in crimes, inftead of turning them
into laudable acts, only augments the quantity and
the intenfity of the guilt. I am well aware, that
men love to hear of their power, but have an ex-
treme difrelifh to be told of their duty. This is
of courfe ; becaufe every duty is a limitation of feme
power. Indeed arbitrary power is fo mi'ch to the
depraved tafteof the vulgar, of the vulgar of every
deicription, that almoft all the difTenfions which
lacerate the commonwealth, are not concerning the
manner in which it is to be exercifed, but concerning
the hands in which it is to be placed. Somewhere
they are refolved to have it. Whether they de-
fire it to be veiled in the many or the few, de-
pends with moft men upon the chance which they
imagine they themfelves may have of partaking in
the exercife of that arbitrary fway, in the one mode
or in the other.

It is not neceflary to teach men to third after
power. But it is very expedient that, by moral
inftructioR, they fhould be taught, and by their civil
conftitutions they fhould be compelled^ to put many
reftrictions upon the immoderate exercife of it, and
the inordinate defire. The beft method of obtaining
thefe two great points forms the important, but at
the fame time the difficult problem to the true
itatefman. He thinks of the place in which politi-
cal power is to be lodged, with no other attention,
than as it may render the more or the lefs practi-
cable, its falutary reftraint, and its prudent direc-
tion. For this reafon no legiflator, at any period of
the world, has willingly placed the feat of active
H power

( 98 )

power in the hands of the multitude : Becaufe there
it admits of no control, no regulation, no fteady
direction whatfoever. The people are trie natural
control on authority ; but to exercife and to control
together is contradictory and impoffible.

As the exorbitant exercife of power cannot, un-
der popular fway, be effectually reftrained, the other
great object of political arrangement, the means
of abating an excefiive defire of it, is in fuch a ftate
Hill worfe provided for. The democratick com-
monwealth is the foodful nurfe of ambition. Un-
der the other forms it meets with many reftraints.
Whenever, in Hates which have had a democratick
bafiSjthelegiflators have endeavoured to put reftraints
upon ambition, their methods were as violent, as in
the end they were ineffectual; as violent indeed as
any the moft jealous defpotifm could invent. The
oftracifm could not very long fave itfelfi and much
lefs the ftate which it was meant to guard, from the
attempts of ambition, one of the natural inbred in-
curable diftempers of a powerful democracy.

But to return from this fliort digreflion, which
however is not wholly foreign to the queftion of the
effect of the will of the majority upon the form or
the exiftence of their fociety. I cannot too often
recommend it to the ferious confideration of all
men, who think civil fociety to be within the pro-
vince of moral jurifdiction, that if we owe to it any
duty, it is not fubject to our will. Duties are not
voluntary. Duty and will are even contradictory
terms. Now though fociety might be at firft a
voluntary act (which in many cafes it undoubtedly
was) it continues under a permanent {landing cove-
nant, coexifting with the fociety ; and it attaches
upon every individual of that fociety, without any
formal act of his own. This is warranted by the
general practice, arifing out of the general fenfe of
mankind. Men without their choice derive be-
nefits

( 99 )

nefhs from that aflbciation; without their choice
they are fubjected to duties in confequence of thefe
benefits j and without their choice they enter into a
virtual obligation as binding as any that is actual.
Look through the whole of life and the whole fyf-
tem of duties. Much the ftrongeft moral obliga-
tions are fuch as were never the refults of our option.
I allow, that if no fupreme ruler exifts, wife to
form, and potent to enforce, the moral law, there is
no fanction to any contract, virtual or even actual,
againft the will of prevalent power. On that hypo-
thefis, let any fet of men be ftrong enough to fet
their duties at defiance, and they ceafe to be duties
any longer. We have but this one appeal againft
irrefiftible power—

Si genus humanum et mortalia temmtls arma,
At fperate Deos memores fandi atque nefandi.

Taking it for granted that I do not write to the
difciples of the Parifian philofophy, I may afliime,
that the awful author of our being is the author of our
place in the order of exiftence ; and that having dif-
pofed and marfhalled us by a divine tactick, not ac-
cording to our will, but according to his, he has, in
and by that difpofition, virtually Subjected us to act
the part which belongs to the place affigned us. We
have obligations to mankind at large, which are not
in confequence of any fpecial voluntary pact. They
arife from the relation of man to man, and the rela-
tion of man to God, which relations are not matters
of choice. On the contrary, the force of all the pacts
which we enter into with any particular perfon amongft
them, depends upon thofe prior obligations. In fome
cafes the fubordinate relations are voluntary, in others
they are neceffary — but the duties are all compulfive-
When we marry, the choice is voluntary, but the duties
are not matter of choice. They are dictated by the
nature of the fituation. Dark and infcrutable are
H 2 the

( 1=0 )

the ways by which we come into the world. Ther
inftincts which give rile to this myfterious pro-
ce£> of nature are not of our making. But out:
of phyfical caufes, unknown to us, perhaps un-
knowable, arife moral duties, which, as we are
ab>e perfectly to comprehend, we are bound indif-
penfably to perform. ChikLen are not confenting
to their relation, but their relation, without their
actual confent, binds them to its duties; or rather it
implies their confent, becaufe the prefumed confent
of every rational creature is in unifon with the predif-
po fed order of things. Men come in that manner
into a community with the focial ftate of their pa-
rents, endowed with all the benefits, loaded with
all the duties of their fituation. If the focial ties and
ligaments, ipun out of tliofe phyfical relations which
are the elements of the commonwealth, in moft cafes
begin, and .always continue, independently of our
will, fo does that relation called our country,
which comprehends (as it has been well faid) " * all
the charities of all," bind us to it without any fti-
pulation on our part. Nor are we left without
powerful inftincts to make this duty as dear and
grateful to us, as it is awful and coercive. Our
country is not a thing of mere phyfical locality.
It confifts, in a great meature, in the antient order
into which we are born. We may have the fame
geographical fituation, but another country ; as we
may have the fame country in another foil. The
place that determines our duty to our country is
a focial, civil relation.

Thefe are the opinions of the author whofe caufe
I defend. I lay them down not to enforce them
upon others by difputation, but as an account of
his proceedings. On them he acts ; and from
them he is convinced that neither he, nor any man,

* Omnes omnium charitates patria una comple&itur. Cic.

or

or number of men, have a right (except what ne~
cefiity, which is out of and above all rule, rather
impofes than beftows) to free themfelves from,
that primary engagement into which every man
born into a community as much contracts by his
being born into it, as he contracts an obligation
to certain parents by his having been derived from
their bodies. The place of every man determines
his duty. If you afk, Quern te Deus effejiiffit? You
will be anfwered when you refolve this other quef-
tion, Humana qua parte locatus es in re* ?

I admit, indeed, that in morals, as in all things
elfe, difficulties will fometimes occur. Duties will
fometimes crofs one another. Then queftions will
arife, which of them is to be placed in fubordina-
tion ; which of them may be entirely luperfeded ?
Thefe doubts give rife to that part of moral fci-
ence called cafuiftry, which, though necefTary to be
well ftudied by thofe who would become expert in
that learning, who aim at becoming what, I think
Cicero fomewhere calls, artifices officiorum -, it re-
quires a very folid and difcriminating judgment,
great modefty and caution, and much fobriety of
mind in the handling ; elfe there is a danger that
it may totally fubvert thofe offices which it is its
object only to methodize and reconcile. Duties, at
their extreme bounds, are drawn very fine, fo as
to become almoft evanefcent. In that ftate, fome
fhade of doubt will always reft on thefe queftions,
when they are purfued with great fubtilty. But the

* A few lines in Perfius contain a good fummary of all the
objeds of moral inveftigation, and hint the refult of our en-
quiry : There human will has no place.

QuidfuMus ? et quidnam iiiduri gignimur ? ordo
Quis datus? et metre qui • moilis rlexue et uncle ?
Quis modus argento ? Quidy/n of tare ? Quid afpcr
Utile nummus habet ? Patn<s charifque propinquts
Quantum elargiri debeat ? — Quern te Deus effe
JuJ/tt ?— et humana qua parte iocatus es in re ?

Hj very

very habit of ftating thefe extreme cafes is not
very laudable or fafe : becaufe, in general, it is
not right to turn our duties into doubts. They are
impofed to govern our conduct, not to exercife our
ingenuity ; and therefore, our opinions about them
ought not to be in a ftate of fluctuation, but fteady,
furc, and refolved.

Amongft thefe nice, and therefore dangerous,
points of cafuiftry may be reckoned the queftion fo
much agitated in the prefent hour — Whether, after
the people have difcharged themfelves of their
original power by an habitual delegation, n:> occa-
fion can pofllbly occur which may juftify their re-
fumption of it ? This queftion, in this latitude,
is very hard to affirm or deny : but I am fatisfied
that no occafion can juftify fuch a refumption,
which wculd not equally authorize a difpenfation
•with any other moral duty, perhaps with all of
them together. However, if in general it be
not eafy to determine concerning the lawfulnefs
of fuch devious proceedings, which muft be ever
on the edge of crimes, it is far from difficult to
forefee the perilous confequences of the refufcita-
tion of fuch a power in the people. The practical
confequences of any political tenet go a great way
in deciding upon its value. Political problems do
not primarily concern truth or falfehood. They
relate to good or evil. What in the refult is likely
to produce evil, is politically falfe : that which is
productive of good, politically is true.

Believing it therefore a queftion at leaft ar-
duous in the theory, and in the practice very critical,
it would well become us to afcertain, as well as
we can, what form it is that our incantations are
about to call up from darknefs and the fleep of ages.
When the fupreme authority of the people is in
queftion, before we attempt to extend or to confine
it, we ought to fix in our minds, with fome degree

of

of diftinftnefs, an idea of what it is we mean
when we fay the PEOPLE.

In a (late of rude nature there is no fuch thing
as a people. A number of men in themfelves have
no colle6tive capacity. The idea of a people is the
idea of a corporation. It is wholly artificial ; and
made like all other legal fictions by common
agreement. What the particular nature of that
agreement was, is collected from the form into
which the particular fociety has been caft. Any
other is not their covenant. When men, there-
fore, break up the original compact or agreement
which gives its corporate form and capacity to a
ftate, they are no longer a people; they have no
longer a corporate exiftence ; they have no longer
a legal coactive force to bind within, nor a claim
to be recognized abroad. They are a number of
vague loofe individuals, and nothing more. With
them all is to begin again. Alas ! they little know
how many a weary flep is to be taken before they
can form themfelves into a mafs, which has a true
politic perfonality.

We hear much from men, who have not ac-
quired their hardinefs of aflertion from the profun-
dity of their thinking, about the omnipotence of a
majority, in fuch a diflblution of an ancient fociety
as hath taken place in France. But amongft men fo
difbanded, there can be no fuch thing as majority or
minority; or power in anyone perfon to bind another.
The power of acting by a majority, which the gentle-
men theorifts feem to afTume fo readily, after they
have violated the contract out of which it has arifen,
(if at all it exifted) muft be grounded on two aflump-
tions; firft, that of an incorporation produced by
unanimity; and fecondly, an unanimous agreement,
that the a<5t of a mere majority (fay of one) ihall
pafs with them and with others as the acl: of the
whole.

H4 We

We are fo little affected by things which are habi-
tual, that we confider this idea of the decifion of a ma-
jority as if it were a law of our original nature : But
fuch conftruclive whole, refiding in a part only, is one
of th.e mofl violent fictions of pofitive law, that ever
has been or can be made on the principles of artifi-
cial incorporation. Out of civil fociety nature knows
nothing of it ; nor are men, even when arranged ac-
cording to civil order, otherwife than by very long
training, brought at all to fubmit to it. The rrind
is brought far more eafily to acquiefce in the pro-
ceedings of one man, or a few, who act under a
general procuration for the ftate, than in the vote
of a victorious majority in councils in which
every man has "his fhare in the deliberation. For
there the beaten party are exafperated and four-
ed by the previous contention, and mortified by
the conclufive defeat. This mode of decifion,
where wills may be fo nearly equal, where, ac-
cording to cjrcumftances, the fmaller number may
be the {banger force, and where apparent reafon
may be ail upon one fide, and on the other little elfe
than impetuous appetite ; all this muft be the refult
of a very particular and ipecial convention, confirmed
afterwards by long habits of obedience, by a fort
of difcipline in fociety, and by a ftrong hand, vefted
with ftationary permanent power, to enforce this fort
of conftruclive general will. What oigan it is that
fliall declare the corporate mind is fo much a matter
of pofitive arrangen ent, that feveral dates, for the
validity of feveral of their acts, have required a pro-
portion of voices much greater than that of a mere
majority. 1 hefe proportions are fo entirely governed
by convention, that in ibme cafts the minority decides.
The laws in many countries to condemn require more
than a mere majority ; lefs than an equal number
to acquit. In our judicial trials we require unani-
mity either to condemn or to abfolve. In fome in-
corporations

( 105 )

corporations one man fpeaks for the whole ; in
others, a few. Until the other day, in the confti-
tution of Poland, unanimity was required to give
validity to any a6t of their great national council
or diet. This approaches much more nearly to rude
nature than the inftitutions of any other country.
Such, indeed, every commonwealth muft be, with-
out a pofitive law to recognize in a certain number
the will of the entire body.

If men diflblve their antient incorporation, in or-
der to regenerate their community, in that ftate of
things each man has a right, if he pleafes, to re-
main an individual. Any number of individuals,
who can agree upon it, have an undoubted right to
form themfclves into a ftate apart and wholly inde-
pendent. If any of thefe is forced into the fellow-
fhip of another, this is conqueft and not compacl:.
On every principle, which fuppofes fociety to be in
virtue of a free covenant, this compulfiye incorpo-
ration muft be null and void.

As a people can have no right to a corporate ca-
pacity without univerfal confent, fo neither have they
a right to hold exclufivelv any lands in the name and
title of a corporation On the fcheme of the pre-
fent rulers in our neighbouring country, regenerated
as they are, they have no more right to the ter-
ritory called France than T have. I have a right to
pitch my tent in any unoccupied place I can find for
it ; and I may apply to my own maintenance any
part of their unoccupied foil. I may purchafe
the houfe or vineyard of any individual proprietor
who refufes his confent (and moft proprietors have,
as far as they dared, refulcd ir) to the new incorpo-
ration. I ftand in his independent place. Who are
thefe infolent men calling themfelves the French
nation, that would monopolize this fair domain of
nature ? Is it becaufe they fpeak a certain jargon ?
Is it their mode of chattering, to me unintelli-
gible,

gible, that forms their title to my land? Who
are they who claim by prefcription and defcent
from certain gangs of banditti called Franks, and
Burgundians, and Vifigoths, of whom I may have
never heard, and ninety-nine out of an hundred
of themfelves certainly never have heard; whilft
at the very time they tell me, that prefcription and
long poffeffion form no title to property ? Who
are they that prefume to aflert that the land which
I purchafed of tke individual, a natural perfon, and
not a fiction of flate, belongs to them, who in the
very capacity in which they make their claim can
exift only as an imaginary being, and in virtue of
the very prefcription which they reject and difown r
This mode of arguing might be pufhed into all the
detail, fo as to leave no fort of doubt, that on
their principles, and on the fort of footing on which
they have thought proper to place themfelves, the
crowd of men on the other fide of the channel,
who have the impudence to call themfelves a
people, can never be the lawful exclufive pof-
fefTors of the foil. By what they call reafoning
without prejudice, they leave not one ftone upon
another in the fabric of human fociety. They fub-
vert all the authority which they hold, as well as
all that which they have deftroyed.

As in the abftract, it is perfectly clear, that, out of
a ftate of civil fociety, majority and minority are re-
lations which can have no exiftence ; and that in civil
fociety, its own fpecific conventions in each incor-
poration, determine what it is that conftitutes the
people, fo as to make their act the fignification of the
general will •, to come to particulars, it is equally clear,
that neither in France nor in England has the ori-
ginal, or any fubfequent compact of the ftate, ex-
prefTed or implied, conftituted a majority of men, told
by the bead, to be the acting people of their feveral «
communities. And I fee as little of policy or uti- *
5 %>

Jity, as there is of right, in laying down a principle
that a majority of men told by the head are to be
confidered as the people, and that as fuch their will
is to be law. What policy can there be found in
arrangements made in defiance of every political
principle ? To enable men to act with the weight
and character of a people, and to anfwer the ends for
which they are incorporated into that capacity, we
mult fuppofe them (by means immediate or confe-
quential) to be in that Hate of habitual focial difci-
pline, in which the wifer, the more expert, and the
more opulent, conduct, and by conducting enlighten
and protect the weaker, the lefs knowing, and the lefs
provided with the goods of fortune. When the mul-
titude are not under this difcipline, they can fcarcely
be faid to be in civil fociety. Give once a certain
conftitution of things, which produces a variety of
conditions and circumftances in a ftate, and there is
in nature and reafon a principle which, for their own
(benefit, poftpones, not the intereft but the judgment,
of thofe who are niimeroplures,to thofe who are wr-
Jufe et honore majores. Numbers in a ftate (fuppofing,
which is not the cafe in France, that a ftate does
exift) are always of confideration — but they are
not the whole confideration. It is in things more
ferious than a play, that it may be truly faid,/^//V
eft equitem mibi plaitdere.

A true natural ariftocracy is not a feparate intereft
in the ftate, or feparable from it. It is an effential
integrant part of any large people rightly confti-
tuted. It is formed out of a clafs of legitimate
preemptions, which, taken as generalities, muft
be admitted for actual truths. To be bred in
a place of eftimation ; To fee nothing low and
fordid from one's infancy ; To be taught to refpect
one's felf; To be habituated to the cenforial
infpection of the public eye ; To look early to
public opinion ; To ftand upon fuch elevated

ground

ground as to be enabled to take a large view of the
wide-fpread and infinitely diverfified combinations
of men and affairs in a large fociety ; To have lei-
fure to read, to reflect, to convert ; To be enabled
to draw the court and attention of the wife and
learned wherever they are to be found ; — To be ha-
bituated in armies to command and to obey ;
To be taught to defpife danger in the purfuit
of honour and duty ; To be formed to the
greateft degree of vigilance, forefight, and circum-
fpection, in a ftate of thing, in which no fault
is committed with impunity, -md the flighted mif-
takes draw on the moft ruinous confequences —
To be led to a guarded and regulated conduct,
from a fenfe that you are confidered as an inftri^ctor
of your fellow-citizens in their higheft concerns, and
that you aft as a reconciler between God and man
— To be employed as an administrator f law and
juftice, and to be thereby amongft the firft benefac-
tors to mankind — To be a profeffor of high fcience,
or of liberal and ingenuous art — To be amongft
rich traders, who from their fuccefs are prefumed to
have iharp and vigorous understandings, and to p f-
iefs the virtues of diligence, order, conftancy, and
regularity, and to have cultivated an habitual regard
to commutative juftice — Thefe are the circum-
ftances of men, that form what I fhould call a na-
tural ariftocracy, without which there is no rution.

The ftate of civil fociety, which neceflarily ge-
nerates this ariftocracy, is a ftate of nature j and
much more truly fo than a favage and incoherent
mode of life. For man is by nature reafonable; and
he is never perfectly in his natural ftate, but when he
is placed where reafon may be beft cultivated, and
moft predominates. Art is man's nature. We are
as much, at leaft, in a ftate of nature in formed
manhood, as in immature and helplefs infancy. Men
qualified in the manner I have juft defcribed, form in

nature,

nat',:re as fhe operates in the common modification of
fock'ty,the leading, guiding, and governing part. It is
the foul to the body, without which the man does not
exift. To give therefore no more impoi tance, in the
focial order, to fuch defer iptions of men, than that of
fo many units, is an horrible ufurpation.

When great multitudes aft together, under that
difcipline of nature, I recognize the PEOPLE. I
acknowledge fomething that perhaps equals, and
ought always to guide, the fovercignty of conven-
tion. In all things the voice of this grand chorus
of national harmony ought to have a mighty and
decifive influence. But when you diiturb this har-
mony j when you break up this beautiful order,
this array of truth and nature, as well as of habit
and prejudice ; when you feparate the common fort
of men from their proper chieftains fo as to form
them into an adverfe army, I no longer know that
venerable objeft called the people in fuch a dif-
banded race of deferters and vagabonds. For a
while they may be terrible indeed ; but in fuch a
manner as wild beads are terrible. The mind owes
to them no fort of fubmiffion. They are, as they
have always been reputed, rebels. They may law-
fully be fought with, and brought under, whenever
an advantage offers. Thofe who attempt by outrage
and violence to deprive men of any advantage which
they hold under the laws, and to deilroy the natural
order of life, proclaim war againft them.

We have read in hiftory of that furious infurrec-
tion of the common people in France called the
Jacquerie ; for this is not the firft time that the
people have been enlightened into treafon, murder,
and rapine. Its objeft was to extirpate the gentry.
The Capial de Buche, a famous foldier of thofe days,
dishonoured the name of a gentleman and of a man
by taking, for their cruelties, a cruel vengeance on
thefe deluded wretches : It was, however, his right
j and

and his duty to make war upon them, and after-
wards, in moderation, to bring them to punifhment
for their rebellion ; though in the fenfe of the French
revolution, and of fome of our clubs, they were the
people $ and were truly fo, if you will call by that
appellation arty majority of men told by the head.

At a time not very remote from the fame pe-
riod (for thefe humours never have affected one of
the nations without fome influence on the other)
happened feveral rifings of the lower commons in
England. Thefe infurgents were certainly the ma-
jority of the inhabitants of the counties in which
they refided; and Gade, Ket, and Straw, at the head
of their national guards, and fomented by certain
traitors of high rank, did no more than exert, accord-
ing to the doctrines of ours and the Parifian focieties,
the fovereign power inherent in the majority.

We call the time of thofe events a dark age.
Indeed we are too indulgent to our own profici-
ency. The Abbe John Ball underftood the rights
of man as well as the Abbe Gregoire. That reverend
patriarch of fedition, and prototype of our modern
preachers, was of opinion with the national affem-
bly, that all the evils which have fallen upon men
had been caufed by an ignorance of their " having
been born and continued equal as to their rights."
Had the populace been able to repeat that profound
maxim all would have gone perfectly well with
them. No tyranny, no vexation, no oppreffion, no
{•are, no forrow, could have exifted in the world.
This would have cured them like a charm for the
tooth-ach. But the loweft wretches, in their moft
ignorant ftate, were able at all times to talk fuch
fluff; and yet at all times have they fuffered many
evils and many oppreflions, both before and fmce
the republication by the national affembly of this
Ipell of healing potency and virtue. The enlighten-
ed Dr. Ball, when he wilhed to rekindle the lights

and

( III )

and fires of his audience on this point, chofe for1
the text the following couplet :

When Adam delved and Eve fpan,
Who was then the gentleman ?

Of this fapient maxim, however, I do not give him
for the inventor. It feems to have been handed
down by tradition, and had certainly become pro-
verbial; but whether then compofed, or only ap-
plied, thus much muft be admitted, that in learning,,
fenfe, energy, and comprehenfivenefs, it is fully equal
to all the modern diflertations on the equality of
mankind -, and it has one advantage over them, —
that it is in rhyme *.

There is no doubt, but that this great teacher
of the rights of man decorated his difcourfe on
this valuable text, with lemmas, theorems, fcholia,

corollaries,

* It is no fmall lofs to the world, that the whole of this en-
lightened and philofophic fermon, preached to t^.vo hundred
thoufand national guards affembled at Blackheath (a number
probably equal to the fublime and majeftic Federation of the I4th
of July 1790, in the Champs de Mars J -is not preferved. A fhort
abftrad is, however, to be found in Walfingham. I have added
it here for the edification of the modern Whigs, who may pof-
libly except this precious little fragment from their general
contempt of antient learning.

Ut fua doftrina plures inficeret ad le Blackheth (ubi ducenta
millia hominum communium fuere iimul congregata) hujufce-
modi fermonem eft exorfus.

Whan Adam dalfe, and Eve fpan, who was than a gentleman ?

Continuanfque fermonem inceptum nitebatur per verba pro-
verbii quod pro themate fumpferat, introducere & probare,
ab initio omnes pares creates a natura, fervitutem per injuftam
oppreffionem nequam hominum imroduclam contra Dei volun-
tatem, quia fi Deo placuiflet lervos creafle, utique in principio
mundi conftituiflet, quis fervus, quifve dominus futurus fuiffeu
Confiderarent igitur jam tempus a Deo datum eis, in quo
(depofito fervitutis jugo diutius) poflent fi vellent, libertate
diu concupita gaudere. Quapropter monuit ut eflent viri
cordati, & amore boni patrisfamilias excolentis agrum fuum &
extirpantis ac refecantis uoxia gramina qu<e fruges lolent

opprimere,

corollaries, and all the apparatus of fcience, which
was furnifhed in as great plenty and perfection out
of the dogmatic and polemic magazines, . the old
horfe-armory, of the fchoolmen, among whom the

Rev,

opprimere, & ipfi in praefenti facere feftinarent ; primo majores
regni domino s occidendo ; deind^ juridical, jujUciarics & jura-
tores patritt perimendo ; poftremo quofcunque fcirent in pojte-
rum communitati noci-vos : tollerent de terra fua : fie de-
mum & pacem fibimet parerent & fecuritatcm in futurum ; Ji
fublatis majoribus effet inter eos aqua, libertas, eadem nobilitas, par
dignitas,jimilifyue poteftas.

Here is difplayed at once the whole of the grand arcanum
pretended to be found out by the national aflembly, for fecuring
future happinefs, peace, and tranquillity. There feems however
to be fome doubt whether this venerable protomartyr of philo-
fophy was inclined to carry his own declaration of the rights of
men more rigidly into pradlice than the national aflembly them-
felves. He was, like them, only preaching licentioufnefs to the
populace to obtain power for himfelf, if we may believe what is
fubjoined by the hiilorian.

Cumque hasc & plura alia deliramenta [think of this old fool's
calling all the wife maxims of the French academy deliramenta}
prasdicaflfet, commune vulgus cum tanto favore profequitur, ut
acclamarent eunt archiepifcopum futurum, & regni cancellarium.
Whether he would have taken thefe fituations under thefe names,
or would have changed the whole nomenclature of the ftate and
church, to be underftood in the fenfe of the Revolution, is not fo
certain. It is probable that he would have changed the names
and kept the fubftance of power.

We find too, that they had in thofe days their Society
for conftitttticnal information, of which the reverend John Ball
was a confpicuous member, fometimes under his own name,
fometimes under the feigned name of John Schep. Beftdes
him it confifted (as Knyghton tells us) of perfons who went by
the real or fictitious names of Jack Mylner, Tom Baker, Jack
Straw, Jack Trewman, Jack Carter, and probably of many
more. Some of the choiceft flowers of the publications, charitably
written and circulated by them gratis, are upon record in Wal-
fingham and Knyghton : and I am inclined to prefer the pithy
and fententious brevity of thefe bulletins of ancient rebellion,
before the looje and confufed prolixity of the modern advertife-
ments of conltitutional information. They contain more good
morality, and lefs bad politics ; they had much more foundation
in real oppreffion ; and they have the recommendation of being
much better adapted to the capacities of thofe for whofe ia-

ftru&ion

&ev. Dr. Ball was bred, as they can be fupplied
from the new arfenal at Hackney. It was, no
doubt, diipofed with all the adjutancy of definition

and

ftru&ion they were intended. Whatever laudable pains the
teachers of the prefent day appear to take, I cannot compliment
them, fo far as to allow, that they have fucceeded in writing down
to the level of their pupils, the members of tbefovereign, with half
the ability of Jack Carter and the reverend John Ball, — That
my readers may judge for themfelves, I (hall give them one or
two fpecimens.

The firft is an addrefs from the reverend John Ball under his
ttom de guerre of John Schep. I know not againft what parti-
cular " guyle in borough" the writer means to caution the
people; it may have been only a general cry againft " rotten
boroughs," which it was thought convenient then as now to make
the firft pretext, and place at the head of the lift of grievances.

JOHN SCHEP.

John Schep fometime Seint Mary Pried of Yorke, and now of
Colchefter, greeteth well John NamelefTe, & John the Miller &
John Carter, and biddeth them that they beware of guyle in borcught
and ftand together in God's name ; and biddeth Piers Ploweman
goe to his werke, and chaftife well Hob the robber, [probably
the king] and take with you John Trewman, and all his fellows
and no moe.

John thfr.Miller hath yground fmal, fmall, fmall •.

The King's Sonne of Heaven fhal pay for all.

Beware or ye be woe,

Know your frende fro your foe.

Have enough and fay hoe :

And do wel and better, and flee finne,

And feeke peace and holde you therein;

& fo biddeth John Trewman, & all his fellowes.

The reader has perceived, from the laft lines of this curious
ftate paper, how well the national afTembly has copied its union
of the projeffion of univerfal peace, with the practice of murder
and confufion, and the blaft of the trumpet of fedition in all na-
tions. He will, in the following conftitutional paper, obferve
how well, in their enigmatical ftyle, like the afTembly and their
abettors, the old philosophers profcribe all hereditary diftindion,
andbeftow it only on virtue andwifdom, according to their efti-
tnation of both. Yet thefa people are fuppofed never to have
heard of " the rights of man!"

JACK MVLNER.

Jakke Mylner afketh help to turne his mylne aright.
He hath s;rounden fmal, fmal,
Tbe King's Sone of Heven he fhall pay fur alle.

I Lok*

( "4 )

and divifion, in which (I fpeak it with fubmif-
lion) the old marfhals were as able as the modern
martinets. Neither can we deny, that the philofo-
phic auditory, when they had once obtained this
knowledge, could never return to their former ig-
norance j or after fo inftru&ive a lefture be in the
fame ftate of mind as if they had never heard it*.
But thefe poor people, who were not to be envied
for their knowledge, but pitied for their delufion,
were not reafoned (that was impofiible) but beaten
out of their lights. With their teacher they were
delivered over to the lawyers ; who wrote in their
blood the ftatutes of the land, as harfhly, and in the
fame fort of ink, as they and their teachers had
written the rights of man.

Our doctors of the day are not fo fond of quoting
the opinions of this antient fage as they are of

Loke thy mylne go a ryyt with the four fayles, and the pofi
ftande in fteadfaftnefle.

With ryyt & with myyt,

With flcill & with wy lie,

Lat myyt help ryyt,

And fkyl go before wille,

And ryyht before myght,

Than goth our mylne aryght.

And if myght go before ryght,

And wylle before fkylle;

Than is our mylne mys-a-dyght.

JACK CARTER underftood perfectly the do&rine oflooking
to the end, with an indifference to the means t and the probability
of much good ariflng from great evil.

Jakke Carter prayes yowe alle that ye make a gode enJe of
that ye have begunnen, & doth wele and ay bettur & bettur,
for at the even men heryth the day. For if the ende be web
than is alle ivele. Lat Peres the plowman my brother dwelle
at home and dyght us corne, & I will go with yowe & helpe,
that I may, to dyghte youre mete and youre drynke, that ye none
fayle. Lokke 'that Hobbe robbyoure be wele chaftyfed for
lefyng of your grace ; for ye have gret nede to take God with
yowe in all your dedes. For now is tyme to be war.

* See the wife remark on this fubjeft, in the Defence of
Rights of Man, circulated by the focieties.

imitating

( "S )

imitating his conduct ; Firft, becaule* it might ap-
pear, that they are not as great inventors as they
would be thought •, and next, becaufe, unfortunately
for his fame, he was not fuccefsful. It is a remark,
liable to as few exceptions as any generality can be>
that they who applaud profperous folly, and adore
triumphant guilt, have never been known to fuc-
cour or even to pity human weaknefs or offence
when they become fubject to human viciffitude,
and meet with puniihment inftead of obtaining
power. Abating for their want of fenfibility to the
fufferings of their affbciates, they are not fo much
in the wrong: for madnefs and wickednefs are
things foul and deformed in themfelves ; and (land
in need of all the coverings and trappings of fortune
to recommend them to the multitude. Nothing
can be more loathfome in their naked nature.

Aberrations like thefe, whether antient or mo-
dern, unluccefsful or proiperous, are things of pa£-
fage. They furnifh no argument for fuppofmg a
multitude told by the head to be the -people. Such
a multitude can have no fort of title to alter the
feat of power in the fociety, in which it ever ought
to be the obedient, and not the ruling or pre rid-
ing part. What power may belong to the whole
mafs, in which mafs, the natural ariftccracyy or
what by convention is appointed to reprefent and
ftrengthen it, acts in its proper place, with its proper
•weight, and without being fubjected to violence, is
a deeper queftion. But in that cafe, and with that
concurrence, I Ihould have much doubt whether
any rafh or defperate changes in the ftate, fuch as we
have feen in France, could ever be effected.

I have faid, that in all political queftions the
confequences of any afTumed rights are of great
moment in deciding upon their validity. In this
point of view let us a little fcrutinize the effects of a
right in the mere majority of the inhabitants of any
I 2 country

country of fuperfeding and altering their government
at pleq/ure.

» The fum total of every people is compofed of its
units. Every individual muft have a right to ori-
ginate what afterwards is to become the aft of the
majority. Whatever he may lawfully originate, he
may lawfully endeavour to accomplifh. He has a
right therefore in his own particular to break the ties
and engagement which bind him to the country in
which he lives ; and he has a right to make as
many converts to his opinions, and to obtain as
many affociates in his defigns, as he can pro-
cure : For how can you know the difpofitions
of the majority to deftroy their government, but
by tampering with fome part of the body ? You
muft begin by a fecret conipiracy, that you may
end with a national confederation. The mere
pleafure of the beginner muft be the fole guide ;
fmce the mere pleafure of others muft be the fole
ultimate fan&ion, as well as the fole actuating prin-
ciple In every part of the progrefs. Thus arbi-
trary will (the laft corruption of ruling power)
ftep by ftep, poifons the heart of every citizen.
If the undertaker fails, he has the misfortune of a
rebel, but not the guilt. By fuch doctrines, all
love to our country, all pious veneration and at-
tachment to its laws and cuftoms, are obliterated
'from our minds ; and nothing can refult from
this opinion, when grown into a principle, and
animated by difcontent, ambition, or enthufiafm,
but a feries of confpiracies and feditions, fome-
times ruinous to their authors, always noxious to
the ftate. No fenfe of duty can prevent any
man from being a leader or a follower in fuch en-
terprizes. Nothing reftrains the tempter ; nothing
guards the tempted. Nor is the new ftate, fabri-
cated by fuch arts, fafer than the old. What can
prevent the mere will of any perfon, who hopes to
% unite

( "7 )

unite the wills of others to his own, from an attempt
wholly to overturn it ? It wants nothing but a dif-
pofition to trouble the eftablifhed order, to give a
tide to the enterprise.

When you combine this principle of the right to
change a fixed and tolerable conflitution of things
at pleafure, with the theory and practice of the
French affembly, the political, civil, and moral ir-
regularity are if pofiible aggravated. The aflembly
have found another road, and a far more commo-
dious, to the deftruction of an old government, and
the legitimate formation of a new one, than through
the previous will of the majority of what they call
the people. Get, fay they, the poflefiion of power by
any means you can into your hands 3 and then a
fubfequent confent (what they call an addrefs of ad-
hefion) makes your authority as much the act of the
people as if they had conferred upon you origi-
nally that kind and degree of power, which,
without their permiffion, you had feized upon.
This is to give a direct fanction to fraud, hypo-
crify, perjury, and the breach of the moft facred
trufts that can exift between man and man. What
can found with fuch horrid difcordance in the mo-
ral ear, as this pofition, That a delegate with limited
powers may break his fworn engagements to his
conftituent, affume an authority, never committed to
him, to alter all things at his pleafure; and then, if
he can perfuade a large number of men to flatter him
i» the power he has ufurped, that he is abfolved in
his own confcience, and ought to ftand acquitted in
the eyes of mankind ? On this fcheme the maker of
the experiment miift begin with a determined per-
jury. That point is certain. He muft take his
chance for the expiatory addrerTes. This is to make
the fuccefs of villainy the itandard of innocence.

Without drawing on, therefore, very fhocking

CQnfequencesa neither by previous confent, nor by

I 3 fubfequent

( "8 )

iubfequent ratification of a mere reckoned majority y
can any fet of men attempt to diffolve the ftate at
their pleafure. To apply this to our prefent fub-
ject. When the feveral orders, in their feveral
bailliages, had met in the year 1789, fuch of them,
I mean, as had met peaceably and conftitutionally,
to choofe and to inftruct their reprefentatives, fo
organized, and fo acting, (becaufe they were or-
ganized and were acting according to the conventions
which made them a people) they were the people of
France. They had a legal and a natural capacity to
be confidered as that people. But obferve, whilft
they were in this ftate, that is, whilft they were a
people, in no one of their inftructions did they charge
or even hint at any of thofe things, which have
drawn upon the ufurping affembly, and their ad-
herents, the deteftation of the rational and thinking
part of mankind. I will venture to affirm, without
the leaft apprehenfion of being contradicted by any
perfon who knows the then ftate of France, that if
any one of the changes were propofed, which form
the fundamental parts of their revolution, and com-
pofe its moft diftinguifhing acts, it would not have
had one vote in twenty thoufand in any order.
Their inftructions purported the direct contrary to
all thofe famous proceedings, which are defended a$
the acts of the people. Had fuch proceedings been
expected, the great probability is, that the peo-
ple would then have rifen, as to a man, to prevent
them. The whole organization of the aflembly
was altered, the whole frame of the kingdom was
changed, before thefe things could be done. It is
long to tell, by what evil arts of the confpirators,
and by what extreme weaknefs and want of fteadinefs
in the lawful government, this equal ufurpation on the
rights of the prince and people, having firft cheated,
and then offered violence to both, has been able to
triumph, and to employ with fuccefs the forged

fignature

( "9 )

fignature of an imprifoncd fovereign, and the fpu-
rious voice of dictated addrefles, to a fubfequcnt
ratification of things that had never received any
previous fanction, general or particular, exprefled
or implied, from the nation (in whatever fenfe that
word is taken) or from any part of it.

After the weighty and refpectable part of the peo*
pie had been murdered, or driven by the menaces
of murder from their houfes, or were difperfed in
exile into every country in Europe; after the foldiery
had been debauched from their officers ; after pro-
perty had loft its weight and consideration, along
with its fecurity ; after voluntary clubs and aflbcia-
tions of factious and unprincipled men were fubftitu-
ted in the place of all the legal corporations of the
kingdom arbitrarily diflblved; after freedom had
been banifhed from * thofe popular meetings, whofc
fole recommendation is freedom — After it had
come to that pafs, that no diflent dared to appear
in any of them, but at the certain price of life ;
after even diflent had been anticipated, and afTarfina-
tion became as quick as fufpicion ; fuch pretended
ratification by addrefies could be no aft of what any
lover of the people would choofe to call by their
name. It is that voice which every fuccefsful ufur-
pation, as well as this before us, may eafily pro-
cure, even without making (as thefe tyrants have
made) donatives from the fpoil of one part of the
citizens to corrupt the other.

The pretended rights of man, which have made
this havock, cannot be the rights of the people.
For to be a people, and to have thefe rights, are
things incompatible. The one fuppofes the pre-
lence, the other the abfence of a ftate of civil fo-
ciety. The very foundation of the French com-
monwealth is falfe and felf-deftruftive ; nor can its

* The primary aflemblics.

I 4 principles

principles be adopted in any country, without the
certainty of bringing it to the very fame condition
in which France is found. Attempts are made to
introduce them into every nation in Europe. This
nation, as pofieffing the greateft influence, they wifh
moft to corrupt, as by that means they are allured
the contagion muft become general. I hope, there-
fore, I fhall be excufed, if I endeavour to ihew, as
fhortly as the matter will admit, the danger of
giving to them, either avowedly or tacitly, the
fmalleft countenance.

There are times and circumftances, in which
not to fpeak out is at leaft to connive. Many
think it enough for them, that the principles
propagated by thefe clubs and focieties enemies
to their country and its conftitution, are not owned
by the modern Whigs in parliament, who are fo
warm in condemnation of Mr. Burke and his book,
and of courfe of all the principles of the ancient
constitutional Whigs of this kingdom. Certainly
they are not owned. But are they condemned with
the fame zeal as Mr. Burke and his book are con-
demned ? Are they condemned at all? Are they
rejected or difcountenanced in any way whatfbever ?
Is any man who would fairly examine into the de-
meanour and principles of thole focieties, and that
too very moderately, and in the way rather of ad-
monition than of punifhment, is fuch a man even
decently treated ? Is he not reproached, as if, in
condemning fuch principles, he had belied the con-
duel of his whole life, fuggefting that his life had
been governed by principles fimilar to thole which
he now reprobates ? The French fyftem is in the
mean time, by many active agents out of doors, rap-
tu rou fly praiied -, The Britifh conftitution is coldly
tolerated. But thefe conftitutions are different, both
in the foundation and in the whole fuperftructure; and
jt is plain, that you cannot build up the one but on the

ruins

ruins of the other. After all, if the French be a fupe-
rior fyftem of liberty, why fhould we not adopt it ?
To what end are ourpraifes ? Is excellence held out
to us only that we fhould not copy after it ? And
what is there in the manners of the people, or in the
climate of France, which renders that fpecies of re-
public fitted for them, and unfuitable to us ? A ftrong
and marked difference between the two nations
ought to be fhewn, before we can admit a conftant
affected panegyrick, a Handing annual commemo-
ration, to be without any tendency to an example.

But the leaders of party will not go the length
of the doctrines taught by the feditious clubs. I am
fure they do not mean to do fo. God forbid!
Perhaps even thofe who are directly carrying on
the work of this pernicious foreign faction, do not
all of them intend to produce all the mifchiefs which
muft inevitably follow from their having any
fuccefs in their proceedings. As to leaders in par-
ties, nothing is more common than to fee them
blindly led. The world is governed by go-be-
tweens. Thefe go-betweens influence the perfcns
with whom they carry on the intercourfe, by
(rating their own fenfe to each of them as the
fenfe of the other ; and thus they reciprocally
mafter both fides. It is firft buzzed about the
cars of leaders, " that their friends without doors
(f are very eager for fome meafure, or very warm
" about fome opinion — that you muft not be
" too rigid with them. They are ufeful perfbns, and
«f zealous in the caufe. They may be a little wrong ;
" but the fpirit of liberty muft not be damped ; and
" by the influence you obtain from fome degree of
Cf concurrence with them at prefent, you may be
" enabled to fet them right hereafter."

Thus the leaders are at firft drawn to a conni-
vance with fentiments and proceeding?, often to-
fally different from their ferious and deliberate

notions.

notions. But their acquiefcence anfwers every
purpofe.

With no better than luch powers, the go-be-
tweens aflume a new reprefentative character. What
at beft was but an acquiefcence, is magnified into
an authority, and thence into a defire on the part
of the leaders ; and it is carried down as fuch to the
fubordinate members of parties. By this artifice
they in their turn are led into meafures which at
firft, perhaps, few of them wifhed at all, or at leaft
did not defire vehemently or fyftematically.

There is in all parties, between the principal lead-
ers in parliament, and the loweft followers out of
doors, a middle fort of men ; a fort of equeftrian
order, who, by the fpirit of that middle fituation,
are the fitteft for preventing things from running
to excefs. But indecifion, though a vice of a totally
different character, is the natural accomplice of vi-
olence. The irrefolution and timidity of thofe who
compofe this middle order, often prevents the effect
of their controlling iituaticn. The fear of differing
with the authority of leaders on the one hand, and of
contradicting the defires of the multitude on the
other, induces them to give a careleis and pafiive af-
fent to meafures in which they never were confultcd :
and thus things proceed, by a fort of activity of
inertnefs, until whole bodies, leaders, middle men,
and followers, are all hurried, with every appear-
ance, and with many of the effefts, of unanimity,
into fchemes of politics, in the fubftance of which
no two of them were ever fully agreed, and the
origin and authors of which, in this circular mode
of communication, none of them find it poffible
to trace. In my experience I have feen much of
this in affairs, which, though trifling in compa-
rifon to the prefent, were yet of fome importance
to parties j and I have known them fuffer by it.
The fober part give their fandion, at firft through
3 inattention

( "3 )

inattention and levity ; at laft they give it through
neceflity. A violent fpirit is raifed, which the pre-
Tiding minds, after a time, find it impracticable to
flop at their pleafure, to control, to regulate, or even
to direct.

This Ihews, in my opinion, how very quick and
awakened all men ought to be, who are looked
up to by the public, and who deferve that confi-
dence, to prevent a furprife on their opinions, when
dogmas are fpread, and projects purfued, by which
the foundations of fociety may be affected. Before
they liften even to moderate alterations in the govern-
ment of their country, they ought to take care that
principles are not propagated for that purpofe,
which are too big for their object. Doctrines limit-
ed in their prelent application, and wide in their
general principles, are never meant to be confined
to what they at firft pretend. If I were to form a
prognoftic of the effect of the prefent machinations
on the people, from their fenfe of any grievance they
fuffer under this conftitution, my mind would be at
cafe. But there is a wide difference between the
multitude, when they act againft their government
from a fenfe of grievance, or from zeal for fbme
opinions. When men are thoroughly poflefled with
that zeal, it is difficult to calculate its force. It is
certain, that its power is by no means in exact
proportion to its reafonablenefs. It muft always have
been difcoverable by perfons of reflection, but it
is now obvious to the world, that a theory con-
cerning government may become as much a caufe
of fanaticifm as a dogma in religion. There is a
boundary to men's pafiions when they act from
feeling i none when they are under the influence
of imagination. Remove a grievance, and, when
men act from feeling, you go a great way towards
uieting a commotion. But the good or bad con-
of a government, the protection men have en-
joyed,

joyed, or the oppreffion they have fuffered under it,
are of no fort of moment, when a faction proceeding
upon Ipeculative grounds, is thoroughly heated
againft its form. When a man is, from fyftem, furious
againft monarchy or epifcopacy, the good conduct of
the monarch or the bifhop has no other effect than
further to irritate the adverlary. He is provoked
at it as furnifhing a plea for preferving the thing
which he wiflies to deftroy. His mind will be
healed as much by the fight of a fceptre, a mace,
or a verge, as if he had been daily bruifed and
wounded by thefe fymbols of authority. Mere
fpectacles, mere names, will become fufficient caufes
to ftimulate the people to war and tumult.

Some gentlemen are not terrified by the facility
with which government has been overturned in
France. The people of France, they fay, had no-
thing to lofe in the deftruction of a bad confthu-
tion; but though not the bed poflible, we have
ftill a good flake in ours, which will hinder us from
defperate rifques. Is this any fecurity at all againft
thofe who feem to perfuade themfelves, and who
labour to perfuade others, that our conftitution is
an ufurpation in its origin, unwife in its contrivance,
mifchievous in its effects, contrary to the rights of
man, and in all its parts a perfect nuifance? What
motive has any rational man, who thinks in that
manner, to Ipill his blood, or even to riique a fhilling
of his fortune, or to wafte a moment of his leifure,
to preferve it ? If he has any duty relative to it, his
duty is to deftroy it. A conftitution on fufferance is a
ccnftitution condemned. Sentence is already pafled
upon it. The execution is only delayed. On the
principles of thefe gentlemen it neither has, nor
ought to have, any fecurity. So far as regards them,
it is left naked, without friends, partizans, afler-
tors, or protectors.

Let

( IlJ )

Let us examine into the value of this fecurity
upon the principles of thofe who are more fober ;
of thofe who think, indeed, the French conftitution
better, or at lead as good, as the Britiih, without
going to all the lengths of the warmer politicians
in reprobating their own. Their fecurity amounts
in reality to nothing more than this 5 — that the dif-
ference between their republican fyftem and the
Britiih limited monarchy is not worth a civil war.
This opinion, I admit, will prevent people not
very enterprifing in their nature, from an active un-
dertaking againft the Britiih conftitution. But it
is the pooreft defenfive principle that ever was in-
fufed into the mind of man againft the attempts of
thofe who will enterprife. It will tend totally to
remove from their minds that very terror of a
civil war which is held out as our fole fecurity. They
who think fo well of the French conftitution, cer-
tainly will not be the perfons to carry on a war to
prevent their obtaining a great benefit, or at worft
a fair exchange. They will not go to battle in
favour of a caufe in which their defeat might be
more advantageous to the public than their viclory.
They muft at leaft tacitly abet thofe who endeavour
to make converts to a found opinion; they muft dif-
countenance thofe who would oppofe its propaga-
tion. In proportion as by thefe means the enter-
prifing party is ftrengthened, the dread of a ftruggle
is leffened. See what an encouragement this is to
the enemies of the conftitution ! A few aflaffina-
tions, and a very great deftrudtion of property, we
know they confider as no real obftacles in the way
of a grand political change. And they will hope,
that here, if antimonarchical opinions gain ground,
as they have done in France, they may, as in France,
accomplifh a revolution without a war.

They who think fo well of the French conftitu-
tion cannot be ferioufly alarmed by any progrefs

made

made by its partizans. Provifions for fecurity arc
not to be received from thofe who think that there is
no danger. — No ! there is no plan of fecurity to be
liftened to but from thofe who entertain the fame
fears with ourfelves ; from thofe who think that the
thing to be fecured is a great blefiing; and the
thing againft which we would fecure it a great
mifchief. Every perfon of a different opinion muft
be carelefs about fecurity.

I believe the author of the Reflections, whe-
ther he fears the defigns of that fet of people
with reafon or not, cannot prevail on himfelf to
defpife them. He cannot defpife them for their
numbers, which, though fmall, compared with the
found part of the community, are not inconfidera-
ble : he cannot look with contempt on their influ-
ence, their activity, or the kind of talents and tem-
pers which they poflefs, exactly calculated for the
work they have in hand, and the minds they chiefly
apply to. Do we not fee their moft considerable
and accredited minifters, and feveral of their party
of weight and importance, active in fpreading mif-
chievous opinions, in giving fanction to feditious
writings, in promoting feditious anniverfaries ? and
what part of their defcription has difowned them or
their proceedings ? When men, circumftanced as
thefe are, publickly declare fuch admiration of a
foreign conftitution, and fuch contempt of our own,
it would be, in the author of the Reflections, think-
ing as he does of the French conftitution, infamou fly
to cheat the reft of the nation to their ruin, to fay
there is no danger.

In eftimating danger, we are obliged to take into
our calculation the character and difpofition of the
enemy into whofe hands we may chance to fall. The
genius of this faction is eafily difcerned by obferving
•with what a very different eye they have viewed
the late foreign revolutions. Two have paffed be-
fore.

( 1*7 )

fore them. That of France and that of Poland. The
Hate of Poland was fuch, that there could fcarcely
exift two opinions, but that a reformation of its
conftitution, even at fome expence of blood, might
be feen without much difapprobation. No confu-
fion could be feared in fuch an enterprize ; becaufe
the eftablilhment to be reformed was itfelf a ftate of
confufion. A king without authority; nobles without
union or fubordination ; a people without arts, induf-
try, commerce, or liberty ; no order within ; no defence
without ; no effective publick force, but a foreign
force, which entered a naked country at will, and
difpofed of every thing at pleafure. Here was a
ftate of things which feemed to invite and might
perhaps juftify bold enterprize and defperate experi-
ment. But in what manner was this chaos brought
into order ? The means were as finking to the
imagination, as fatisfactcry to the reafon, and footh-
ing to the moral fentiments. In contemplating that
change, humanity has every thing to rejoice and to
glory in ; nothing to be alhamed of, nothing to
liiffer. So far as it has gone, it probably is the
moil pure and defecated public good which ever
has been conferred on mankind. We have feen
anarchy and fervitude at once removed ; a throne
ftrengthened for the protection of the people, with-
out trenching on their liberties; all foreign cabal
baniihed, by changing the crown from elective to
hereditary; and what was a matter of pleafing wonder,
we have leen a reigning king, from an heroic love
to his country, exerting himfelf with all the toil, the
dexterity, the management, the intrigue, in favour
of a family of ftrangers, with which ambitious men
labour for the aggrandifement of their own. Ten
millions of men in a way of being freed gradually,
and therefore fafely to themfelves and the ftate, not
from civil or political chains, which, bad as they
are, only fetter the mind, but from fubftantial per-

fonal

fonal bondage. Inhabitants of cities, before without
privileges, placed in the confideration which belongs
to that improved and connecting fituation of fo-
cial life. One of the moft proud, numerous, and
fierce bodies of nobility and gentry ever known in
the world, arranged only in the foremoft rank of
free and generous citizens. Not one man incurred
lofs, or fuffered degradation. All, from the king
to the day-labourer, were improved in their condi-
tion. Every thing was kept in its place and order ;
but in that place and order every thing was bet-
tered. To add to this happy wonder (this unheard-
of conjunction of wifdom and fortune) not one
drop of blood was fpilled j no treachery ; no out-
rage j no fyftem of (lander more cruel than the
fword; no ftudied infults on religion, morals, or
manners} nofpoil; no confifcation j no citizen beg-
gared j noneimprifoned; none exiled: the whole was
effected with a policy, a difcretion, an unanimity
and fecrecy, fuch as have never been before known
on any occafion; but fuch wonderful conduct was re-
ferved for this glorious confpiracy in favour of the
true and genuine rights and interefts of men.
Happy people, if they know to proceed as they
have begun ! Happy prince, worthy to begin with
fplendor, or to ciofe with glory, a race of patriots
and of kings: and to leave

A name, which every wind to heav'n would bear,
Which men to fpeak, and angels joy to hear.

To finifti all — this great good, as in the inftant it is,
contains in it the feeds of all further improvement -,
and may be confidered as in a regular progrefs, be-
caufe founded on fimilar principles, towards the
ftable excellence of a Britifh conftitution.

Here was a matter for congratulation and for
feftive remembrance through ages. Here moralifts
and divines might indeed relax in their temperance
to exhilarate their humanity. But mark the cha-

rafter

( 1*9 )

rafter of our faftion. All their enthufiafm is kept for
the French revolution. They cannot pretend that
France had flood fb much in need of a change as Po-
land. They cannot pretend that Poland has not ob-
tained a better fyflem of liberty or of government
than it enjoyed before. They cannot aflert, that
the Polilh revolution coft more dearly than that of
France to the interefts and feelings of multitudes of
men. But the cold and fubordinate light in which
they look upon the one, and the pains they tal^e to
preach up the other of thefe revolutions, leave us no
choice in fixing on their motives. Both revolutions
profefs liberty as their objeft j but in obtaining this
©bjeft the one proceeds from anarchy to order: the
other from order to anarchy. The firft fecures its li-
berty by eftablifhing its throne -, the other builds its
freedom on the fubverfion of its monarchy. In the
one their means are unftained by crimes, and their
fettlement favours morality. In the other, vice and
confufion are in the very eflence of their purfuit
and of their enjoyment. The circumftances in
which thefe two events differ, muft caufe the dif-
ference we make in their comparative eftimation,
Thefe turn the fcale with the focieties in favour of
France. Ferrum eft quod amant. The frauds, the
violences, the facrileges, the havock and ruin of fa-
milies, the difperfion and exile of the pride and
flower of a great country, the diforder, the confu-
fion, the anarchy, the violation of property, the
cruel murders, the inhuman confifcations, and in the
end the infolent domination of bloody, ferocious, and
fenfelefs clubs. — Thefe are the things which they
love and admire. What men admire and love, they \
would furely aft. Let us fee what is done in France;
and then let us undervalue any the flighteft danger
of falling into the hands of fuch a mercilefs and
favage faftion !

K « But

' But the leaders of the factious focieties are too
' wild to fucceed in this their undertaking.' I hope
fo. But fuppofing them wild and abfurd, is there
no danger but from wife and reflecting men ? Per-
haps the greateft mifchiefs that have happened in
the world, have happened from perfons as wild as
thofe we think the wildeft. In truth, they are the
fitteft beginners of all great changes. Why en-
courage men in a mifchievous proceeding, becaufe
their abfurdity may difappoint their malice ? ( But
' noticing them may give them confequence.' Cer-
tainly. But they are noticed ; and they are noticed,
not with reproof, but with that kind of countenance
which is given by an apparent concurrence (not a real
one, I am convinced) of a great party, in the praifes
of the object which they hold out to imitation.

But I hear a language ftill more extraordinary,
and indeed of fuch a nature as muft fuppofe, or
leave, us at their mercy. It is this — ( You know
' their promptitude in writing, and their diligence in
' caballing ; to write, Ipeak, or act againtt them,
* will onlyftimulate them to new efforts/ — This way
of confidering the principle of their conduct pays
but a poor compliment to thefe gentlemen. They
pretend that their doctrines are infinitely beneficial
to mankind j but it feems they would keep them
to themfelves, if they were not greatly provoked.
They are benevolent from fpite. Their oracles arc
like thofe of Proteus (whom fome people think
they refemble in many particulars) who never would
give his refponfes unlefs you ufed him as ill as
poflible. Thefe cats, it feems, would not give out
their electrical light without having their backs
well rubbed. But this is not to do them perfect:
juftice. They are fufficiently communicative. Had
they been quiet, the propriety of any agitation of to-
pics on the origin and primary rights of government,

in

in oppofition to their private fentiments, might pof-
fibly be doubted. But, as it is notorious, that they were
proceeding as faft, and as far, as time and circumftan-
tes would admit, both in their difcufiions and cabals
-—as it is not to be denied, that they had opened a cor-
refpondence with a foreign faction, the moft wicked
the world ever faw, and eftabliihed anniverfaries to
commemorate the moft monftrous, cruel, and per-
fidious of all the proceedings of that faction — the
queftion is, whether their conduct was to be re-
garded in filence, left our interference fhould render
them outrageous ? Then let them deal as they1
pleafe with the conftitution. Let the lady be paf-
five, leit the ravifher fhould be driven to force.
Refiftance will only increafe his delires. Yes,
truly, if the refiftance be feigned and feeble. But
they who are wedded to the conftitution will not
aft the part of wittols. They will drive fuch fe-
ducers from the houfe on the firft appearance of
their love-letters, and offered affignations. But if
the author of the Reflections, though a vigilant, was
not a difcreet guardian of the conftitution, let them
who have the fame regard to it, fhew themfelves as
vigilant and more fkilful in repelling the attacks of
feduction or violence. Their freedom from jealoufy
is equivocal, and may arife as well from indifference
to the object, as from confidence in her virtue.

On their principle, it is the refiftance, and not the
afiault, which produces the danger. I admit, indeed,
that if we eftimated the danger by the value of the
writings, it would be little worthy of our attention :
contemptible thefe writings are in every fenfe. But
they are not the caufe; they are thedifgufting fymp-
toms, of a frightful diftemper. They are not other-
wife of confequence than as they fhew the evil habit
of the bodies from whence they come. In that light
the meaneft of them is a ferious thing. If however
I fhould under-rate them ; and if the truth is, that
K 2 they

they are not the refult, but the caufe of the diforders
I fpeak of, furely thofe who circulate operative poi-
fons, and give, to whatever force they have by their
nature, the further operation of their authority and
ad -ption, are to be cenfured, watched, and, if pof-
fible, reprefied.

At what diftance the direct danger from fuch
factions may be, it is not eafy to fix. An adapta-
tion of circumftances to defigns and principles is ne-
cefTary. But thefe cannot be wanting for any long
time in the ordinary courfe of fublunary affairs.
Great difcontents frequently arife in the beft-confti-
tuted governments, from caufes which no human
wifdom can forefee, and no human power ran pre-
vent. They occur at uncertain periods, but at pe-
riods which are not commonly far afuncler. Go-
vernments of all kinds are adminiRered only by
men ; and great miitakes, tending to inflame thefe
difcontents, may concur. The indecifion of thofe
who happen to rule at the critical time, their fupine
neglect, or their precipitate and ill-judged attention,
may aggravate the public misfortunes. In fuch a
flate of things, the principles, now only fown, will
fhoot out and vegetate in full luxuriance. In fuch
circumftances the minds of the people become fore
and ulcerated. They are put out of humour with all
public men, and all public parties ; they are fatigued
with their diffenfions ; they are irritated at their coali-
tions j they are made eafily to believe, (what much
pains are taken to make them believe) that all oppo-
fitions are factious, and all courtiers bafe and fervile.
From their difguft at men, they are foon led to quar-
rel with their frame of government, which they
prefume gives nourilhment to the vices, real or
fuppofed, of thofe who adminifter in it. Mif-
taking malignity for fagacity, they are foon led to
caft off all hope from a good adrniniilration cf affairs,
and come to think that all reformation depends, not

on

( '33 )

on a change of actors, but upon an alteration in the
machinery. Then will be feit the full effect of en-
couraging doctiine;; which tend to make the citi-
zens delpife caei, conltitution. Then will be felt
the plenkuJe c,f the imlchicf of teaching the people
to believe, that ail antient inftitutions are the relults
of ignorance ; and that all prefcriptive government
is in its nature ufurpation. Then will be felt, in
all its energy, the danger of encouraging a fpirit
of litigation in perfons >,f that immature and imper-
fect ttate of kn wledgc which ferves to render them
fufceptible of doubt out incapable of their folution.
Then will be feit, in all its aggravation, the per-
nicious confequence of deftroying all docility in the
minds wf thofe who are not formed for rinding their
own way in the labyrinths of political theory, and
are made to reject the clue, and to difdain the guide,
Then will be felt, and too late will be acknow-
ledged, the ruin which follows the disjoining of re-
ligion from the ftate ; the feparation of morality
from policy ; and the giving confidence no concern
and no coactive or coercive force in the moft mate-
rial of all the focial ties, the principle of our obliga-
tions to government.

I know too, that befides this vain, contradic-
tory, and feif-deftructive leclirity, which fome men
derive from the habitual attachment of the peo-
ple to this conftitution, whilft they fuffer it with a
fort of fportive acquiefcence to be brought into
contempt before their faces, they have other grounds
for removing all apprehenfion from their minds.
They are ofopinion, that there are too many men
of great hereditary eftates and influence in the king-
dom, to fuffer the eftablifhment of the levelling
fyftem which has taken place in France. This is
very true, if in order to guide the power, which now
attends their property, thefe men poffefs the wifdom
K 3 which

( 134 )

which is involved in early fear. But if through a
fupine fecurity, to which fuch fortunes are peculiarly
liable, they neglect the ufe of their influence in the
feafon of their power, on the firft derangement of
fociety, the nerves of their ftrength will be cut.
Their eftates, inftead of being the means of their fe-
curity, will become the very caufes of their danger.
Inftead of beftowing influence they will excite ra-
pacity. They will be looked to as a prey.

Such will be the impotent condition of thofe men
of great hereditary eftates, who indeed diflike the de-
figns that are carried on, but whofe diflike is rather
that of fpectators, than of parties that may be con-
cerned in the cataftrophe of the piece. But riches
do not in all cafes fecure even an inert and paffive re-
fiftance. There are always, in that defer iption, men
whofe fortunes, when their minds are once vitia-
ted by paflion or by evil principle, are by no
means a fecurity from their actually taking their
part againft the public tranquillity. We fee to
what low and defpicable pafiions of all kinds many-
men in that clafs are ready to facrifice the patri-
monial eftates, which might be perpetuated in,
their families with fplendor, and with the fame of
hereditary benefactors to mankind from generation
to generation. Do we not fee how lightly people
treat their fortunes when under the influence of
the paflion of gaming ? The game of ambition or
refentment will be played by many of the rich and
great, as defperately, and with as much blindriefs
to the confequences, as any other game. Was he
a man of no rank or fortune, who firft fet on foot
the diftuioances which have ruined France ? Paf-
fion blinded him to the confequences, fo far as they
concerned himfelf j and as to the confequences with
regard to others, they were no part of his confi-
deration -f nor ever will be with thofe who bear any

refemblance

( '35 )

refemblance to that virtuous patriot and lover of
the rights of man.

There is alfo a time of infecurity, when in-
terefb cf all forts become objects of fpeculation.
Then it is, that their very attachment to wealth and
importance will induce feveral perfons of opulence
to lift themfelves, and even to take a lead with
the party which they think moft likely to prevail, in
order to obtain to themfelves confideration in fome
new order or diibrder of things. They may be
led to a6b in this manner, that they may fecure fome
portion of their own property; and perhaps to be-
come partakers of the fpoil of their own order.
Thofe who fpeculate on change, always make a
great number among people of rank and fortune, as
well as amongft the low and the indigent.

What fecurity againft all this ? — All human fecu-
rities are liable to uncertainty. But if any thing
bids fair for the prevention of fo great a calamity,
it muft confift in the ufe of the ordinary means of
juft influence in fociety, whilft thofe means conti-
nue unimpaired. The public judgment ought to re-
ceive a proper direction. Ail weighty men may
have their fhare in fo good a work. As yet, not-
withftanding the ftrutting and lying independence
of a braggart philofophy, nature maintains her
rights, and great names have great prevalence.
Two fuch men as Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox, adding
to their authority in a point in which they concur,
even by their difunion in every thing elfe, might
frown thefe wicked opinions out of the kingdom.
But if the influence of either of them, or the influ-
ence of men like them, fhould, againft their ferious
intentions, be otherwife perverted, they may counte-
nance opinions which (as I have faid before, and
could wifh over and over again to prefs) they may
in vain attempt to control. In their theory,
thefe doflrines admit no limit, no qualification
K 4 whatfoever.

\

( '36 )

whatfoever. No man can fay how far he will
go, who joins with thofe who are avowedly going
to the utmoft extremities. What fecurity is there
for flopping fhort at all in thefe wild conceits ?
Why, neither more nor lefs than this — that the mo-
ral fentiments of fome few amongft them do put
fome check on their favage theories. But let us
take care. The moral fentimcnts, fo nearly con-*
neded with early prejudice as to be almoft one and
the fame thing, will afluredly not live long under a
difcipline, which has for^its bafis the deftruclion of all
prejudices, and the making the mind proof againft all
dread of confequences flowing from the pretended
truths that are taught by their philofophy.

In this ichool the moral fcntiments muft grow
weaker and weaker every day. The more cautious
of thefe teachers, in laying down their maxims, draw
as much of the conclufion as fuits, not with their
premifes, but with their policy. They truft the
reft to the fagacity of their pupils. Others, and
thefe are the moil vaunted for their fpirit, not
only lay down the fame premifes, but boldly
draw the conclusions to the deftrudtion of our
whole conftitution in church and flate. But
are thefe conciufions truly drawn ? Yes, mofl cer-
tainly. Their principles are wild and wicked. But
let juflice be done even to phrenfy and villainy.
Thefe teachers are perfectly fyftematic. No man
who aflumes their grounds can tolerate the Biitifh
conftitution in chuich or ftate. Thefe teachers
profefs to fcorn ail mediocrity ; to engage for per-
fection; to proceed by the fimpleft and fhorteft
course. They build their politics, not on conve-
nience but on truth ; and they profels to condu6t
men to certain happinefs by the afiertion of their
undoubted rights. With them there, is no com-
promife. All other governments are ufurpations,
which juftify and even demand refiftance.

Their

( '37 )

Their principles always go to the extreme. They
who go with the principles of the ancient Whigs, \
which are thofe contained in Mr, Burke's book, never •
can go too far. They may indeed flop fhort of fome
hazardous and ambiguous excellence, which they will
be taught to poftpone to any reafonable degree of
good they may actually polFefs. The opinions
maintained in that book never can lead to an ex-
treme, becaufe their foundation is laid in an op-
pofition to extremes. The foundation of govern-
ment is there laid, not in imaginary rights of men,
(which at beft is a confufion of judicial with civil
principles) but in political convenience, and in human
nature j either as that nature is univerfal, or as it is
modified by locakhabits and focial aptitudes. The
foundation of government, (thofe who have read
that book will recollect) is laid in a provifion for our
wants, and in a conformity to our duties ; it is to
purvey for the one; it is to enforce the other.
Thefe doctrines do of themfelves gravitate to a mid-
dle point, or to fome point near a middle. They
fuppofe indeed a certain portion ofliberty to be eflfen-
tial to all good government ; but they infer that this
liberty is to be blended into the government; to
harmonize with its forms and its rules; and to be
made fubordinate to its end. Thofe who are not
with that book are with its oppofite. For there
is no medium befides the medium itfelf. That
medium is not fuch, becaufe it is found there; but
it is found there, becaufe it is conformable to truth
and nature. In this we do not follow the author;
but we and the author travel together upon the fame
fafe and middle path.

What has been laid of the Roman empire, is at
lead as true of the Bricifli conftitution — {c Offingen-
" forum annorum fortuna, difciplinaque, compages h*c
t( coaluit\ qu<£ conve/li fine convellenttum exitio non
." — This Britifh conftitution has not been

ftruck

( '3* )

ilruck out at an heat by a fet of prefumptuous men,
like the aflembly of pettifoggers run mad in Paris.

" 'Tis not the hafty produft of a day,
«' But the well-ripen'd fruit of wife delay."

It is the refult of the thoughts of many minds, in
many ages. It is no fimple, no fuperficial thing, nor
to be eftimated by fuperficial underftandings. An-
ignorant man, who is not fool enough to meddle
with his clock, is however fufficiently confident
to think he can fafely take to pieces, and put
together at his pleafure, a moral machine of another
guife importance and complexity, compofed of far
other wheels, and Tprings, and balances, and coun-
teracting and co-operating powfrs. Men little
think how immorally they act in rafhly med-
dling with what they do not underftand. Their de-
lufive good intention is no fort of excufe for their pre-
fumption. They who truly mean well mud be fear-
ful of acting ill. The Britifh conftitution may have
its advantages pointed out to wile and reflecting
minds ; but it is of too high an order of excellence
to be adapted to thofe which are common. It takes
in too many views, it makes too many combina-
tions, to be fo much as comprehended by Ih allow and
fuperficial underftandings. Profound thinkers will
know it in its reafon and fpirit. The lefs enquiring will
recognize it in their feelings and their experience.
They will thank God they have a ftandard, which, in
the moft effential point of this great concern, will put
them on a par with the moft wife and knowing.

If we do not take to our aid the foregone ftudies
of men reputed intelligent and learned, we ihall be
always beginners. But in effect, men muft learn
fpmewhere ; and the new teachers mean no more
than what they effect, that is, to deprive men of
the benefit of the collected wifdom of mankind, and
to make them blind difciples of their own particu-
lar

( '39 )

lar prefumption. Talk to thefe deluded creatures,
(all the difciples and moil of the mailers) who are
taught to think themfelves fo newly fitted up and
furnifhed, and you will find nothing in their
houfes but the refufe of Knaves Acre ; nothing
but the rotten iluff, worn out in the fervice of
delufion and fedition in all ages, and which being
newly furbifhed up, patched, and varniihed, ferves
well enough for chofe who being unacquainted
with the conflift which has always been main-
tained between the fenfe and the qonfenfe of man-
kind, know nothing of the former exiftence and:
the antient refutation of the fame follies. It is near
two thoufand years fmce it has been obferved, that
thefe devices of ambition, avarice, and turbulence,
were antiquated. They are, indeed, the mofl an-
tient of all common places ; common places, fome-
times of good and neceffary caufes ; more frequent-
ly of the worft, but which decide upon neither.
— Eadem Jemper caufa, libido et avaritiat et mutan-
darum rerum amor. — Ceterum libertas et fyecioja no-
mina pretexuntur -, nee qiiifquam alienum Jermtium^ et
dominatiomm fibi conciiphity ut non eadem ifta vocabula
ufiirparet.

Rational and experienced men, tolerably well know,
and have always known, how to diftinguiih between
true and falfe liberty ; and between the genuine
adherence and the falfe pretence to what is true.
But none, except thofe who are profoundly iludied,
can comprehend the elaborate contrivance of a fa-
bric fitted to unite private and public liberty with
public force, with order, with peace, with juflice,
and, above all, with the inftitutions formed for
beilowing permanence and liability through ages,
upon this invaluable whole.

Place, for inilance, before your eyes, fuch a man
as Montefquieu. Think of a genius not born in
every country, or every time; a man gifted by nature

with

•with a penetrating aquiline eye ; with a judgment
prepared with the moft extenfive erudition ; with
an herculean robuftnefs of mind, and nerves not to
be broken with labour j a man who could fpend
twenty year in one purfuit. Think of a man, like
the univerfal patriarch in Milton (who had drawn up
before him in his prophetic viiion the whole fmes
of the generations which were to iffue from his loins)
a man capable of placing in review, after having
brought together, from the eaft, rhe weft, the north,
and the fouth, from the coarfenefs of the rudeft bar-
barifm to the moft refined and fu'otf -. civilization, all
the fchemes of government which had ever prevailed
amongft mankind, weighing, meafuring, collaring,
and comparing them all, joining fact with theory,
and calling into council, upon all this infinite aiicm-
blage of things, all the fpeculations which have fa-
tigued the underflandings of profound reafoners in all
times ! — Let us then confider, that all thefe were
but fo many preparatory freps to qualify a man,
and fuch a man, tinctured with no national preju-
dice, with no domeftic affection, to admire, and
to hold out to the admiration of mankind the
conftitution of England ! And J(hall we Engiiihmen
revoke to fuch a fuit ? Shall we, when fo much
more than he has produced, remains flill to be under-
ftood and admired, inftead of keeping ourfelves in
the fchools of real fcience, choofe for our teachers
men incapable of being taught, whofe only claim to
know is, that they have never doubted ; from whom
we can learn nothing but their own indocilityj
who would teach us to fcorn what in the filence of
cur hearts we ought to adore ?

Different from them are all the great critics.
They have taught us one effential rule. I think the
excellent and philofophic artift, a true judge, as well
as a perfect follower of nature, Sir Jofhua Reynolds
has fomewhere applied it, or fomething like it, in

his

his own profeflioh. It is this, That if ever we
fhoukl find ourfelves difpofed not to admire thofe
writers or artifts, Livy and Virgil for inftance, Ra-
phael or Michael Angelo, whom all the learned had
admired, not to follow our osvn fancies, but to ftudy
them until we know how and what we ought to ad-
mire ; and if we cannot arrive at this combination ot
admiration with knowledge, rather to believe that we
are dull, than that the reit of the world has been im-
pofed on. It is as good a rule, at lead, with regard
to this admired conftitution. We ought to under-
ftand it according to our meafure ; and to venerate
where we are not able prefently to comprehend.

Such admirers were our fathers to whom we owe
this fplendid inheritance. Let us improve it with
zeal, but with fear. Let us follow our anceftors,men
not without a rational, though without an exclufive
confidence in themfelves j who, by refpefting the
reafon of others, who, by looking backward as well
as forward, by the modefty as well as by the energy
of their minds, went on, infenfibly drawing this
conftitution nearer and nearer to its perfection by
never departing from its fundamental principles, nor
introducing any amendment which had not a fub-
fifiing root in the laws, conftitution, and ufages of
the kingdom. Let thofe who have the truft of
political or of natural authority ever keep watch
againft the defperate enterprizes of innovation : Let
even their benevolence be fortified and armed.
They have before their eyes the example of a mo-
narch, infuked, degraded, confined, depofed ; his
family difperfed, fcattered, imprifoned; his wife in-
fulted to his face like the vileft of the fex, by the
vileft of all populace j himfelf three times dragged
by- thele wretches in an infamous triumph •, his
children torn from him, in violation of the firft right
of nature, and given into the tuition of the moll
defperate and impious of the leaders of defperate
9 and

and impious clubs ; his revenues dilapidated and
plundered ; his magiftrates murdered j his clergy
profcribed, perfecuted, famifhed ; his nobility de-
graded in their rank, undone in their fortunes, fu-
gitives in their perfons ; his armies corrupted and
ruined ; his whole people impoverifhed, difunitedj
difiblved ; whilft through the bars of hL prifon, and
amidft the bayonets of his keepers, he hears the tu-
mult of two conflicting factions, equally wicked and
abandoned, who agree in principles, in difpofitions^
and in objects, but who tear each other to pieces
about the moft effectual means of obtaining their
common end ; the one contending to preferve for
a while his name and his perfon, the more eafily to
deftroy the royal authority— the other clamouring
to cut off the name, the perfon, and the monarchy
Together, by one facrilegious execution. All this
accumulation of calamity, the greateft that ever
fell upon one man, has fallen upon his head, be-
caufe he had left his virtues unguarded by caution j
becaufe he was not taught that where power is con-
cerned, he who will confer benefits mud take fecu-
rity againft ingratitude.

I have ftated the calamities which have fallen
upon a great prince and nation, becaufe they were
not alarmed at the approach of danger, and be-
caufe, what commonly happens to men furprifed,
they loft all refource when they were caught in it.
When I fpeak of danger, I certainly mean to ad-
drefs myfelf to thofe who confider the prevalence
of the new Whig doctrines as an evil.

The Whigs of this day have before them, in
this Appeal, their conftitutional anceftors : They
have the doctors of the modern fchool. They
will choofe for themfelves. The author of the
ReBections has chofen for himfelf. If a new or-
der is coming on, and all the political opinions
mud pals away as dreams, which our anceftors
x have

( 143 )

have worfhipped as revelations, I fay for him, that
he would rather be the laft (as certainly he is the
leaft) of that race of men, than the firft and great-
eft of thofe who have coined to themfelves Whig \
principles from a French die, unknown, to the im» J
prefs of our fathers in the conftitution.

FINIS.

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